Amazon Bestsellers Scraper - Track Top Products & Rankings

Extract Amazon bestseller data across all categories. Monitor top product rankings, prices, ratings, and reviews for market research, competitor analysis, and price tracking. Auto-discover 40+ categories or track specific ones. Export to JSON/CSV for automation workflows (n8n, Zapier, Make.com, Google Sheets).

🚀 Key Features

• Auto-Discovery: Automatically finds all 40+ Amazon bestseller categories
• Rank Tracking: Monitor bestseller positions (#1-100) with historical rank changes
• Complete Product Data: Titles, prices, ratings, review counts, images, ASINs
• Multi-Marketplace: US (amazon.com), UK (amazon.co.uk), Germany (amazon.de), France, Spain, Italy
• Pay-Per-Result: Only pay for products scraped ($0.001-0.01 per product)
• Automation-Ready: Flat JSON/CSV format for n8n, Zapier, Make.com, Google Sheets, Power BI
• Stealth Scraping: Advanced anti-detection (Playwright + Stealth Plugin)
• No Proxies Needed: Works reliably with smart rate limiting (20-30s delays)

📊 What Data You Get

Each bestseller product includes:

{
  "asin": "B0CQMRKRV5",
  "rank": 2,
  "category": "Electronics",
  "categoryUrl": "https://amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics",
  "title": "Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (newest model)",
  "price": 19.99,
  "currency": "USD",
  "rating": 4.7,
  "reviewCount": 43718,
  "imageUrl": "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/...",
  "productUrl": "https://amazon.com/dp/B0CQMRKRV5",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-10-28T12:00:00.000Z"
}

All fields included:

• asin - Amazon product ID (for API lookups)
• rank - Bestseller position (1-100)
• category - Category name (e.g., "Electronics", "Books")
• categoryUrl - Direct link to category bestseller page
• title - Full product title
• price - Current price (numeric, ready for calculations)
• currency - USD, GBP, EUR (auto-detected from domain)
• rating - Average rating (1-5 stars)
• reviewCount - Total number of reviews
• imageUrl - High-res product image URL
• productUrl - Direct Amazon product page link
• scrapedAt - Timestamp (ISO 8601 format)

🎯 Use Cases

E-commerce & Selling

• Product Research: Find trending bestsellers to source for your store
• Competitor Price Tracking: Monitor competitor pricing on top products
• Niche Discovery: Identify profitable product categories and price points
• Rank Monitoring: Track your own products' bestseller ranking changes

Market Research & Analysis

• Trend Analysis: Identify seasonal trends and emerging product categories
• Demand Forecasting: Analyze review counts and ratings for demand signals
• Market Size Estimation: Estimate market size from bestseller data
• Competitor Intelligence: See which competitors dominate categories

Automation & Integration

• Price Alerts: Set up n8n/Zapier workflows for price drop notifications
• Rank Change Alerts: Get notified when rankings shift significantly
• Data Pipelines: Feed data to Google Sheets, Airtable, databases
• Dashboard Analytics: Build real-time dashboards in Power BI, Tableau

📥 Input Configuration

Auto-Discovery Mode (Recommended)

Leave categories empty to auto-discover all Amazon bestseller categories:

{
  "categories": [],
  "maxProductsPerCategory": 5,
  "maxCategories": 2,
  "includeSubcategories": false,
  "trackRankChanges": false,
  "amazonDomain": "amazon.com",
  "useProxies": false
}

Specific Categories Mode

Track specific categories by providing URLs:

{
  "categories": [
    "https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics",
    "https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books",
    "https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/kitchen"
  ],
  "maxProductsPerCategory": 100,
  "maxCategories": 20,
  "includeSubcategories": true,
  "trackRankChanges": true,
  "amazonDomain": "amazon.com",
  "useProxies": false
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
categories	array	[]	Category URLs to scrape. Empty = auto-discover all categories
maxProductsPerCategory	number	5	Products per category (1-100). Start small to avoid timeouts
maxCategories	number	2	Maximum categories to process (1-100). Increase gradually
includeSubcategories	boolean	true	Include subcategory discoveries (e.g., "Electronics > Headphones")
trackRankChanges	boolean	false	Track rank changes over time (requires scheduled runs)
amazonDomain	string	amazon.com	Marketplace: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.es, amazon.it
useProxies	boolean	false	Enable Apify Proxy (NOT recommended - causes slow timeouts)

⏱️ Performance & Reliability

Speed

• Single category: ~15 seconds
• Multiple categories: ~20-30 seconds per category + 20-30s delays between categories
• 2 categories (default): ~1-2 minutes
• 10 categories: ~8-12 minutes

Success Rate

• Without proxies (recommended): 85-100% success rate with 20-30 second delays
• With proxies: 0-40% success rate (Apify proxies cause 30s+ timeouts on Amazon)

Rate Limiting Strategy

The scraper uses 20-30 second random delays between categories to avoid Amazon's "Request was throttled" blocking. This is more reliable than using proxies.

💰 Pricing

Apify Platform Costs

• Compute: ~$0.001-0.005 per category scraped (Apify credits)
• Storage: Negligible (JSON/CSV dataset storage)
• Proxies: NOT required (we disabled them for better performance)

Pay-Per-Event (PPE) Pricing

Set up in Apify Console → Actor → Monetization → Pay per event:

• Event name: item-scraped
• Recommended price: $0.001-0.01 per product
• Typical run cost: 100 products = $0.10-1.00

Example Cost Breakdown

Scenario	Products	Compute	PPE Cost	Total
2 categories × 5 products (default)	10	$0.001	$0.01-0.10	$0.01-0.10
5 categories × 10 products	50	$0.01	$0.05-0.50	$0.06-0.51
10 categories × 50 products	500	$0.05	$0.50-5.00	$0.55-5.05

⚠️ Important Limitations

Amazon Rate Limiting

Amazon protects bestseller pages with anti-bot detection and rate limiting:

✅ How this scraper handles it:

• Uses Playwright + Stealth Plugin to avoid basic detection
• Adds 20-30 second random delays between categories
• Saves full-page screenshots for debugging blocked pages
• Detects "Request was throttled" errors with clear logging

⚠️ Expected behavior:

• Success rate: 85-100% with proper delays
• Occasional blocking: Normal for 1-2 out of 20 categories
• Rate limit errors: "Request was throttled" - increase delays or retry later
• Empty pages: Usually means bot detection - check debug screenshots

Best Practices

1. Use default delays (20-30s) - Don't decrease or you'll get rate limited
2. Run once per hour max - More frequent runs increase blocking
3. Start with 5-10 categories - Test before scaling to 20+
4. Don't enable proxies - They cause 30s+ timeouts on Amazon
5. Use scheduled runs - Apify Scheduler for consistent tracking
6. Check debug screenshots - All runs save screenshots to Key-Value Store

🔧 Technical Details

Technology Stack

• Browser: Playwright with Chromium
• Anti-Detection: playwright-extra + puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth
• Language: TypeScript
• Runtime: Node.js 20
• Dockerfile: apify/actor-node-playwright-chrome:20

Architecture

• Class-based scraper with clear separation of concerns
• Input validation with Zod schemas
• Per-item error handling - one failure doesn't crash entire run
• State management for rank change tracking (optional)
• Screenshot debugging - full-page captures for all categories
• Pay-per-event billing with fallback handling

Selectors (2025 verified)

const SELECTORS = {
  productCard: '[data-component-type="s-search-result"]',
  asin: '[data-asin]',
  title: 'h2 a span',
  price: '.a-price .a-offscreen',
  rating: '.a-icon-star-small .a-icon-alt',
  reviewCount: '.a-size-base.s-underline-text',
  image: '.s-image',
};

💡 FAQ

Q: Why do some categories return 0 products? A: Amazon's anti-bot detection occasionally blocks requests. Check the debug screenshot in Key-Value Store. If you see "Request was throttled", wait 5-10 minutes or reduce maxCategories.

Q: Can I scrape all 40+ categories at once? A: Yes, but start with 5-10 to test. 20 categories takes ~15-25 minutes. More than 20 increases blocking risk.

Q: How often should I run this? A: Once per hour max. More frequent runs trigger Amazon's rate limiting. Use Apify Scheduler for consistent tracking.

Q: Should I enable proxies? A: No. We tested and Apify proxies cause 30+ second timeouts on Amazon. The scraper works better without proxies using smart delays.

Q: Can I track rank changes over time? A: Yes. Enable trackRankChanges: true and run on a schedule. Previous rankings are stored in Apify state.

Q: Can I use this with n8n, Zapier, or Make.com? A: Yes! The output is flat JSON perfect for automation tools. Access via Apify API or webhook triggers.

Q: Which Amazon marketplaces are supported? A: US (.com), UK (.co.uk), Germany (.de), France (.fr), Spain (.es), Italy (.it). Currency auto-detects (USD, GBP, EUR).

Q: What's the difference between this and Amazon Product API? A: Amazon Product API doesn't provide bestseller rankings. This scraper extracts real-time rank positions (1-100) which are not available via API.

🔗 Integration Examples

n8n Workflow

1. Apify Node → Run this actor with schedule trigger
2. Filter Node → Only products with rank ≤ 10
3. Gmail Node → Send top 10 bestsellers email

Zapier Automation

1. Trigger: Apify Run Finished
2. Action: Filter by price < $20
3. Action: Add rows to Google Sheets

Google Sheets Import

=IMPORTDATA("https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?format=csv")

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📚 Related Actors

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🐛 Support

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Documentation: Apify Docs
• Community: Apify Discord

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