Apify Google Street View API

Street View and 360 Panoramas, Addressed by Place Name

A Street View API you can call with a business name instead of coordinates, returning the panoramas attached to that place as rows.

When to use this skill

• The user wants a "street view api" or "google street view images" for a specific business.
• They need 360 panoramas or exterior frontage shots for site surveys, real estate, insurance, or field-service prep.
• They have a place name or a Google Maps URL and do not want to geocode and pick a heading first.
• They want the video clips attached to a place rather than still photos.

Not for: bulk gallery download across a whole category (use the companion apify-google-maps-photo-download skill) or routing and drive times (johnvc/google-maps-directions-api). See references/actor-index.md.

Why this is not the official Street View endpoint

Street View Static renders one tile from a latitude, longitude, heading, pitch, and field of view you supply. Getting from "this restaurant" to "the right panorama facing the right way" is a geocoding and aiming problem you own. This skill instead lists the panoramas Google already associates with the place, so the aiming is already done and the input is a name.

What you get

One dataset row per image. result_type separates the row kinds:

• image (full-size URL) and thumbnail
• position in the gallery section
• photo_id, stable across runs
• data_id and place_title
• category_id, echoing the filter that was applied
• one place_summary row per place with photos_returned and place_categories

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-photos-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills
• Actor ID: johnvc/google-maps-photos-api
• Pricing: pay per event; see the cost section below and references/gotchas.md for live-price commands.

Run it with the Apify CLI

Street View and 360 panoramas for one place:

apify actors call "johnvc/google-maps-photos-api" -i '{"searchTerm":"Mozart Coffee Roasters, Austin TX","maxPlacesPerSearch":1,"photoCategory":"street_view","maxPhotosPerPlace":20}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-street-view-api \
  2>/dev/null

Panoramas for a list of sites you already hold URLs for:

apify actors call "johnvc/google-maps-photos-api" -i '{"placeUrls":["https://www.google.com/maps/place/..."],"photoCategory":"street_view"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-street-view-api \
  2>/dev/null

Video clips instead of stills:

apify actors call "johnvc/google-maps-photos-api" -i '{"searchTerm":"Mozart Coffee Roasters, Austin TX","maxPlacesPerSearch":1,"photoCategory":"videos"}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-street-view-api \
  2>/dev/null

Confirm live pricing and the input schema before a large batch:

apify actors info "johnvc/google-maps-photos-api" --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-street-view-api \
  2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json, --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-google-street-view-api, and 2>/dev/null.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/google-maps-photos-api

Then ask, for example: "Get the Street View panoramas for this address and tell me whether the entrance looks step-free." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Identify the place by name plus city, or by its Google Maps URL. A URL costs nothing to resolve; a search adds one charge.
2. Set photoCategory to street_view for panoramas, or videos for clips.
3. Keep maxPlacesPerSearch at 1 when you mean one specific site, so a loose name does not sweep neighbours.
4. Read the rows; check photos_returned on the summary row before concluding a place has no coverage.
5. Re-host anything you plan to display or archive.

Inputs

• searchTerm (string): a place name, ideally with city and state
• placeUrls (array): Google Maps URLs, parsed locally at no API cost
• dataId / dataIds (string, array): place identifiers you already hold
• photoCategory (enum, use street_view here, or videos for clips)
• maxPlacesPerSearch (integer, default 3, max 20): keep at 1 for a single site
• maxPhotosPerPlace (integer, default 20, max 1000)
• hl (string, default en): interface language

Cost

Billing is pay per event, plus a negligible platform fee per dataset row. Prices below are the BRONZE tier at the time of writing; confirm live prices with the info command above.

• About $0.0015 per image returned.
• About $0.012 per search term, and nothing when you pass URLs or identifiers instead.
• About $0.001 to start a run.
• Checking 50 sites by URL, a few panoramas each, is well under $1.

Suggested confirmation thresholds: warn the user over about $5; get explicit confirmation over about $20. Present cost as "around $X", never a guarantee.

Honest limits

• Street View coverage is uneven. Rural addresses, interior units, and new construction often have none, and an empty result is a real answer rather than a failure.
• The panoramas are whatever Google associates with the place. You cannot request a specific heading, pitch, or field of view the way the Static endpoint lets you.
• No capture dates, so there is no way to tell how old a panorama is or to request an older one.
• Image URLs are Google-hosted and can rotate, so hotlinking them long term is unreliable.

Troubleshooting

• Empty result for street_view: that place has no panoramas attached. Read place_categories on the summary row to see which sections do exist.
• Wrong building: the name matched a neighbour. Pass the Google Maps URL instead of a search term.
• Several places came back when you wanted one: set maxPlacesPerSearch to 1.
• An error row: clean failure, stated plainly; retry once before investigating.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related Actors

• Google Maps Places API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-places-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills
• Google Maps Directions API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-directions-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills
• Google Maps Contributor Reviews API: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-contributor-reviews-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills
• Apple Maps API: https://apify.com/johnvc/apple-maps-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=awesomeskills