Tesco Scraper

Scrape Tesco UK & Ireland grocery products - prices, Clubcard offers, multibuy promotions, unit prices, barcodes, ratings, stock status and category paths - as clean, structured JSON. Built for CPG brands, UK grocery price monitoring / MAP teams and inflation-tracking researchers who need a reliable Tesco data source without an official price api.

No browser and no DOM scraping: the actor talks directly to the same public JSON/GraphQL endpoints Tesco's own web frontend calls (search + product GraphQL), so runs are fast, cheap and return clean structured records. 256 MB memory, plain HTTP.

Main Use Cases

• UK supermarket price monitoring - track shelf prices, Clubcard prices and unit prices across categories over time
• MAP and pricing compliance - compare reseller prices against Tesco national online prices
• Grocery inflation tracking - historical price and promotion data for CPI-adjacent analysis
• CPG and brand analytics - pack sizes, EAN/barcodes, ratings and review counts per product
• Price comparison and retail research - Tesco UK (GBP) vs Ireland (EUR) storefronts in one schema

How It Works - The Bypass (No Browser, No DOM Scraping)

Tesco's storefront (www.tesco.com) sits behind an Akamai WAF that returns 403 Access Denied to plain HTTP requests. This actor instead talks directly to the same public JSON/GraphQL endpoints Tesco's own web frontend calls, which live on separate subdomains and are not behind that WAF:

1. Search - GET https://search.api.tesco.com/search?distchannel=ghs&query=<term>&count=10&offset=<n>&geo=uk returns product IDs (tpnb/tpnc) plus totals and offset pagination.
2. Product details - POST https://xapi.tesco.com/ (GraphQL) with batched GetProductByTpnb / GetProductByTpnc operations (max 10 per request) returns the full product: title, brand, GTIN/EAN, price, unit price, promotions, review stats, pack size and the department/aisle/shelf hierarchy.

Both endpoints require no cookies and no login. The only credential is a public API key embedded in Tesco's own frontend JavaScript, sent as the x-apikey header. The key is not in the source code or input schema - it is provided as the TESCO_API_KEY Actor secret (or env var locally).

Why this approach: dramatically cheaper and faster than a browser (no Chrome, 256 MB memory), returns clean structured JSON, and sidesteps the storefront WAF entirely. A browser would only be needed if these endpoints disappeared.

Clubcard Price Parsing

Tesco encodes the Clubcard price inside the promotion description text, e.g. "GBP 18.50 Save 25% Clubcard Price" -> clubcardPrice: 18.5. Multibuy-style Clubcard offers ("Any 2 for GBP 4 Clubcard Price") are not a straight per-unit price, so they are surfaced in multibuy and clubcardPrice stays null.

Measured Performance (verified)

The GraphQL API rate-limits to roughly 15-25 products per ~5 s window (it answers HTTP 200 with a per-item 429 Too many requests error). Lookups run through a 3-worker parallel pool that re-queues throttled IDs, so runs stay fast (~6 products/s) without dropping items.

Input Parameters

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
searchTerms	array	No	["olive oil", "semi skimmed milk"]	Keywords to search the Tesco UK/Ireland grocery catalogue for
startUrls	array	No	[]	Tesco product pages (/groceries/en-GB/products/...), search pages (?query=...) or category pages; scraped in addition to search terms
maxItems	integer	No	50	Maximum number of products to collect across all inputs (free users capped at 10)
country	string	No	uk	Storefront/currency: uk (GBP) or ie (EUR)
proxy	object	No	off	Standard Apify proxy configuration (not required - the API endpoints are not WAF-protected)

Output Fields

One dataset row per product (full field list in the dataset schema):

• Identity: url, productId (TPNC), tpnb, tpnc, gtin/ean (barcode), name, brand, packSize
• Pricing: price (shelf), currency (GBP/EUR), clubcardPrice (straight price cuts only), clubcardPriceText (raw promo), multibuy (e.g. "Any 2 for GBP 4 Clubcard Price"), promotionText / promotions (raw promo objects), unitPrice / unitOfMeasure / unitPriceText (e.g. "GBP 0.73/litre")
• Reputation & stock: rating, reviewCount, inStock, availability (InStock/OutOfStock)
• Category: department, aisle, shelf, categoryPath (e.g. "Milk, Butter & Eggs > Milk > Semi-Skimmed Milk")
• Metadata: image, country, searchTerm, scrapedAt

Example Input And Output

Example Input

{
  "searchTerms": ["olive oil", "semi skimmed milk"],
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254656543" }],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "country": "uk"
}

Example Output

{
  "url": "https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254656543",
  "productId": "254656543",
  "tpnb": "54550994",
  "gtin": "05000436589457",
  "ean": "05000436589457",
  "name": "Tesco British Semi Skimmed Milk 2.272L, 4 Pints",
  "brand": "TESCO",
  "packSize": "2.272L",
  "price": 1.65,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "clubcardPrice": null,
  "multibuy": null,
  "unitPrice": 0.73,
  "unitOfMeasure": "litre",
  "unitPriceText": "GBP 0.73/litre",
  "rating": 4,
  "reviewCount": 704,
  "inStock": true,
  "availability": "InStock",
  "categoryPath": "Milk, Butter & Eggs > Milk > Semi-Skimmed Milk",
  "image": "https://digitalcontent.api.tesco.com/v2/media/ghs/....jpeg",
  "country": "uk",
  "searchTerm": "semi skimmed milk",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-10T09:20:00.000Z"
}

Integrations & Automation

• Apify API - run via POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/{actorId}/runs, export via GET /v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items?clean=true&format=json
• Schedules - Apify Schedules for daily price monitoring (recommended for MAP and inflation tracking; recurring usage also improves Store recommendation signals)
• Webhooks - price-change events into downstream monitoring dashboards
• Zapier / Make - via the Apify integration (e.g. price drops to Google Sheets/Slack)
• Pay-per-event - $1.50 per 1,000 products, no subscription, free 10-item preview

Related Actors

• tesco-scraper: the most-used Tesco actor on the Store (higher per-1K price), a reference point for the cluster.
• tesco-product-scraper: adds nutrition/ingredients and allergens detail at higher pricing.
• tesco-products-scraper: another Tesco product scraper, for comparison.
• mediamarkt-scraper: EU retail product prices to broaden a European price dataset.
• woolworths-scraper: grocery price monitoring on another supermarket chain.

FAQ

Is there an official Tesco API?

No public, official API exists for the grocery catalogue. This actor uses Tesco's own frontend JSON/GraphQL endpoints (search.api.tesco.com search + xapi.tesco.com GraphQL) with the public API key embedded in Tesco's JavaScript. The storefront WAF is avoided entirely because these API subdomains are not behind it.

How do I scrape Tesco prices without a browser?

Enter searchTerms (and optionally startUrls) and run. Searches page by offset (10 results/page) up to maxItems; product details are batched through GraphQL (max 10 products per request) with a 3-worker pool that handles the API's ~15-25 products/5 s rate limit automatically.

How do I track Clubcard prices?

clubcardPrice is parsed from straight price-cut promos (e.g. "Save 25% Clubcard Price"). Multibuy Clubcard offers ("Any 2 for GBP 4 Clubcard Price") are not a straight per-unit price, so they appear in multibuy while clubcardPrice stays null. Schedule a daily run to track both over time.

Does this work for Tesco Ireland?

Yes - set country: "ie" (EUR). Prices are national online prices for that storefront; store-level/regional pricing is not exposed by these endpoints.

What are the alternatives for UK grocery price data?

Store alternatives: radeance/tesco-scraper ($2.5 per 1K), sian.agency/tesco-product-scraper ($3-8.7 per 1K, adds nutrition/allergens), shahidirfan/tesco-products-scraper and powerai/tesco-products-scraper. This actor is the verified cheapest at $1.50 per 1,000 products on the same core fields.

How much does a run cost, and what if the key rotates?

$1.50 per 1,000 products (free 10-item preview). The public API key may rotate; if requests start returning 403 Forbidden: Invalid Client, update the TESCO_API_KEY Actor secret. Category URLs are resolved best-effort (Tesco's facet IDs are not exposed by the search API).

SEO Keywords

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For AI Agents & LLM Apps

• Purpose: returns one JSON row per Tesco UK/Ireland grocery product (name, brand, pack size, EAN/GTIN, shelf price, Clubcard price, multibuy, unit price, rating, availability, category path, image).
• Minimal working input:

{ "searchTerms": ["olive oil"], "maxItems": 10, "country": "uk" }

• Output field names: url, productId, tpnb, tpnc, gtin, ean, name, brand, packSize, price, currency, clubcardPrice, clubcardPriceText, multibuy, promotionText, promotions, unitPrice, unitOfMeasure, unitPriceText, rating, reviewCount, inStock, availability, department, aisle, shelf, categoryPath, image, country, searchTerm, scrapedAt.
• Behaviors an agent should know:
  • searchTerms and startUrls are additive - start URLs are scraped in addition to search terms, and maxItems caps the combined total.
  • clubcardPrice is only populated for straight price cuts; multibuy Clubcard offers land in multibuy and leave clubcardPrice null - do not treat null as "no price available" when multibuy is set.
  • gtin and ean are aliases of the same barcode value.
  • Cost-relevant default: maxItems defaults to 50 (free tier 10); billing is a flat $0.0015 per dataset row regardless of how many API requests a product took.
  • country switches currency (GBP vs EUR) and storefront; prices are national online prices only, never store-level.
  • The actor may throttle internally under GraphQL rate limits (3-worker pool re-queues) - a run can take longer but does not drop items.
• Billing: pay-per-event - $0.0015 per product row, $0.00005 per run start. No proxy required.

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tesco plc or Tesco Ireland. It accesses only publicly available catalogue data via Tesco's own public frontend JSON/GraphQL endpoints; it does not bypass login, authentication or paywalls, and does not solve CAPTCHAs.

Users are responsible for complying with Tesco's terms of service and applicable data-protection law. Prices and product data are public by design, but respect the site's terms and robots.txt, and use the data for lawful analysis, monitoring and research purposes.