Goodreads

Goodreads is the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations, where members catalog and shelve books, rate and review them, track their reading progress, join reader groups, and receive personalized recommendations. Owned by Amazon since 2013, it originated as a portfolio company of True Ventures. Goodreads formerly operated a public developer API (XML over HTTP, authenticated with a developer key and OAuth 1.0a) that powered many third-party reading apps, but on 2020-12-08 it stopped issuing new developer keys and began retiring the program; there is no current public API. Goodreads still exposes a live OpenID Connect discovery document for account sign-in. This profile is enriched by the API Evangelist pipeline.

Goodreads is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Consumer, Books, Reading, and Social Network.

Goodreads’ developer surface includes API reference, documentation, support, engineering blog, signup flow, authentication, and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

24.1/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 7/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

0 APIs

Company Consumer Books Reading Social Network Recommendations Reviews Amazon

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 24.1/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 6.1 / 17

Access Clarity 5.8 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.9 / 11

Contract Governance 1.9 / 10

Discoverability 4.7 / 9

Regulatory Posture 3.7 / 15

Agent readiness — 7/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points
Access Clarity scores 34.2 — up to +13.2 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 35.7 — up to +12.9 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/goodreads/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/goodreads to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Raycast Store Extensions (first-party publishers + community-wrapped products)	covered	12.1 (thin)	-	-
Obsidian Community Plugins (third-party APIs the Obsidian plugin ecosystem integrates)	covered	12.1 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Goodreads Authentication

openIdConnect/oauth1 · 3 schemes

SECURITY

Goodreads Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

SignUp

SignUp

Login

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

APIReference

APIReference

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

WellKnown

WellKnown

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 2

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Lifecycle

Lifecycle

Conformance

Conformance

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication

Authentication

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

Deprecation

Deprecation

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: goodreads
name: Goodreads
description: Goodreads is the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations, where members catalog and shelve
  books, rate and review them, track their reading progress, join reader groups, and receive personalized recommendations.
  Owned by Amazon since 2013, it originated as a portfolio company of True Ventures. Goodreads formerly operated a public
  developer API (XML over HTTP, authenticated with a developer key and OAuth 1.0a) that powered many third-party reading apps,
  but on 2020-12-08 it stopped issuing new developer keys and began retiring the program; there is no current public API.
  Goodreads still exposes a live OpenID Connect discovery document for account sign-in. This profile is enriched by the API
  Evangelist pipeline.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/goodreads/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/icons/goodreads_icon_100x100-4a7d81b31d932cfc0be621ee15a14e70.png
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- true-ventures
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Consumer
- Books
- Reading
- Social Network
- Recommendations
- Reviews
- Amazon
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/api
- type: Documentation
  url: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-the-use-of-APIs
- type: Support
  url: https://help.goodreads.com/s/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/blog
- type: SignUp
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/user/sign_up
- type: Login
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/user/sign_in
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/about/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.goodreads.com/about/privacy
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/goodreads-authentication.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/goodreads-well-known.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/goodreads-lifecycle.yml
- type: Deprecation
  url: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-the-use-of-APIs
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/goodreads-conformance.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/goodreads-domain-security.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/goodreads-llms.txt
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

Goodreads API — frequently asked questions

How do I authenticate with the Goodreads API?

Goodreads documents its authentication (openIdConnect/oauth1 · 3 schemes). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Goodreads Authentication.

Is the Goodreads API ready for AI agents?

Goodreads has a Kin Score of 24.1 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 6.5 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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