The five-review limit in the Google Places API

The Places API returns at most five reviews per place. There is no parameter, no paging, and no tier that raises it — it is a fixed product decision, not a quota.

The only official route to a complete review set is the Business Profile API, and only for locations you own.

Google treats review content as something it hosts rather than distributes. Five is enough to display a sample and not enough to rebuild the review set somewhere else. Attribution requirements attached to what you do get point in the same direction.

Paging: no parameter exists. Multiple requests: identical results, billed twice. Different language parameters: sometimes returns different reviews, unreliably, and creates duplicates. Scraping Maps: against Google’s terms, and it breaks regularly.

The one thing that works reliably is the Business Profile API for your own verified locations.

Reading the limit as a quota that money or a support request could lift. It is a design decision and has been stable for years. Time spent looking for a way round it is time not spent on the part of the product that matters.

If you need reviews of places you do not own, use a service that already solves the collection problem, and spend your effort on presentation. If you own the locations, request Business Profile API access and build against that.