Playbill APIplaybill.com ↗
Access Broadway show listings, ticket prices, theater locations, performance schedules, and weekly grosses from Playbill via a structured REST API.
What is the Playbill API?
The Playbill API covers Broadway productions across 5 endpoints, returning ticket pricing, theater details, performance schedules, and weekly grosses for currently running and upcoming shows. The get_play_details endpoint delivers a full production record — including theater name and address, schedule, description, and both average and top ticket prices — keyed by the production slug returned from search_plays.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/07c5695d-8db6-4dbd-9a53-caaba516f8a6/search_plays?query=Hamilton&category=broadway' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Search for currently running Broadway shows with an optional title filter. Returns a list of shows with titles, slugs, URLs, and current ticket pricing (average and top ticket prices). Single-page response containing all matching results.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| query | string | Search keyword to filter by play title (case-insensitive substring match) |
| category | string | Show category. Only 'broadway' is currently supported. |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"plays": "array of show objects with title, slug, url, average_ticket_price, and top_ticket_price",
"total": "integer count of returned plays"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"plays": [
{
"url": "https://playbill.com/production/hamilton-broadway-richard-rodgers-theatre-2015",
"slug": "hamilton-broadway-richard-rodgers-theatre-2015",
"title": "Hamilton",
"top_ticket_price": "$349.00",
"average_ticket_price": "$197.30"
}
],
"total": 1
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the Playbill API
What the API covers
The Playbill API surfaces data from playbill.com's Broadway listings. The search_plays endpoint accepts an optional query string for case-insensitive title filtering and an optional category parameter (currently broadway only), returning an array of show objects with title, slug, url, average_ticket_price, and top_ticket_price. The total field tells you how many results matched. Slugs from that response feed directly into get_play_details.
Production details and grosses
get_play_details returns the most complete per-show record: theater (an object with name and address), schedule, description, and both top_ticket_price and average_ticket_price as dollar-amount strings or null. get_grosses returns a flat map of lowercased show names to pricing objects — useful for bulk price comparisons across all currently running shows without fetching each production individually.
Listings and theater-level views
list_broadway_shows retrieves productions from Playbill's "Now on Broadway" and "Upcoming on Broadway" sections. Filter by status (current, upcoming, or all). Each record includes closing_date (ISO YYYY-MM-DD or null) for current shows and first_preview_date for upcoming ones, along with theater venue name and production slug. broadway_theatre_current_and_upcoming flips the perspective: pass a comma-separated theatres list and get one record per venue showing currentShow and comingSoon — useful when you need to know what's at a specific house rather than what's running across all houses.
The Playbill API is a managed, monitored endpoint for playbill.com — not a raw scraper you maintain. Every endpoint is automatically health-checked on a schedule, and when playbill.com changes and a check fails, the API is automatically queued for repair and re-verified. It is built to keep working as the site underneath it changes.
This isn't an official playbill.com API — it's an independent, maintained REST wrapper over public data. Where the source has no official API (or only a limited one), Parse gives you a stable contract over a source that never promised one, and keeps it current. Need a new endpoint or field? You can revise it yourself in plain English and the agent rebuilds it against the live site in minutes — contributing the change back to the shared API is free.
Will this API break when the source site changes?+
Is this an official API from the source site?+
Can I fix or extend this API myself if I need a new endpoint or field?+
What happens if I call an endpoint that has an issue?+
- Track weekly ticket price trends for Broadway shows using
get_grossesto compareaverage_ticket_priceacross all current productions - Build a Broadway trip planner that displays theater addresses and performance schedules from
get_play_details - Alert users when a running show announces a closing date by polling
list_broadway_showswithstatus=currentand watching theclosing_datefield - Display upcoming shows at a specific venue by querying
broadway_theatre_current_and_upcomingwith a named theatre - Populate a show-comparison tool with top and average ticket prices sourced from
search_playsresults - List all announced upcoming Broadway productions and their first preview dates via
list_broadway_showswithstatus=upcoming
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 200 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 100 req/min |
| Team | $300/mo | 20,000 | 300 req/min |
| Company | $1,000/mo | 100,000 | 500 req/min |
Each endpoint has a fixed posted price per successful call — most fall between 1 and 10 credits — shown on this API's page before you run it. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does Playbill have an official developer API?+
What does `get_grosses` return, and how does it differ from the pricing fields on `search_plays`?+
get_grosses returns a single map covering all currently running Broadway shows at once, keyed by lowercased show name, with average_ticket_price and top_ticket_price per entry. search_plays returns the same two price fields per show but also includes title, slug, and url, and supports title filtering. Use get_grosses when you need a bulk snapshot of pricing across every show; use search_plays when you need slugs for further lookups or want to filter by title.Does the API cover historical grosses or archived past productions?+
Can I retrieve individual show reviews or cast lists through this API?+
How does `broadway_theatre_current_and_upcoming` handle theaters with no announced upcoming show?+
comingSoon field returns an empty value rather than a show title. Similarly, currentShow returns 'EMPTY' when no show is currently running at that venue. Omitting the theatres parameter returns records for all theatres in Playbill's listing in their default order.