Taobao Tmall 淘宝 Product Scraper - Prices, Sales & Shops

Taobao Scraper searches Taobao (淘宝) and Tmall (天猫) products by keyword and returns clean, flat JSON records. For every product you get the price and discount price, the sales count, the shop name, ID and ratings, the seller level, where the item ships from, stock and images. It is built for sellers, sourcing teams, analysts and developers who need China e-commerce product data without a Taobao account. No Taobao account, API keys, proxies or cookies are needed.

Pricing is pay-per-event: $0.008 per product, plus a $0.03 start fee per run. 100 products from one keyword cost about $0.83.

What is Taobao?

Taobao (淘宝) is a large Chinese online marketplace run by Alibaba, where many independent shops sell to consumers. Tmall (天猫) is its sister platform for brand and official stores, and Tmall products also appear in Taobao search results. This Actor works on the Taobao search results page, so it covers both regular Taobao shops and Tmall stores.

What data can you get?

Each dataset item is one product (type is product). The most useful fields come first.

Price and sales

Field	Description
price	List price in Chinese yuan (CNY), as a number
discountPrice	Price in CNY after the shop's current promotion; equals price when there is none
discountType	Name of the current promotion, for example 特价秒杀; null when there is no promotion
salesText	Buyer count as Taobao shows it, for example 1万+
salesCount	Lower bound of salesText as a number (1万+ becomes 10000)
commentCount	Review count; usually empty in search results
stock	Stock count shown on the listing

Shop

Field	Description
shopName	Shop name
shopId	Shop ID
isTmall	true when the shop is a Tmall store
sellerLevel	Seller level shown by Taobao
sellerPositiveRate	Positive-review rate of the seller, in percent
descriptionRating	Shop rating for item as described, out of 5
serviceRating	Shop rating for service, out of 5
shippingRating	Shop rating for shipping, out of 5
sellerLocation	Seller's location; empty for many shops

Product

Field	Description
itemId	Taobao item ID
url	Link to the item page on taobao.com
title	Item title (Chinese)
titleEn	English title; usually empty
subtitle	Selling-point line under the title; empty for many items
spuId	Standard product unit ID that groups the same product across shops
imageUrl	Main image URL
imageUrls	Further image URLs
searchKeyword	The search keyword this item was found with
type	Record type: product

Delivery

Field	Description
itemLocation	Where the item ships from (province and city)

The numbers are ready to use: prices are numbers in CNY, the sales count comes both as text as Taobao shows it and as a number, and shop ratings are plain numbers out of 5.

How to use Taobao Scraper

1. Open the Actor on Apify and click Try for free (or Start).
2. Enter one or more search keywords, in Chinese or English.
3. Optionally choose a sort order, turn on Tmall only, and set a minimum and maximum price.
4. Set Max results to the total number of products you want for the run.
5. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
6. Open the Products view in the dataset and export the data as JSON, CSV or Excel, or fetch it through the API.

The Actor also runs with an empty input: {} searches 手机壳 (phone cases), which is a quick way to see the output format.

Input

Field	Type	Required	What it does	Default
keywords	array of strings	Optional	Search keywords, Chinese or English (for example 手机壳 or phone case). They are searched one after the other, and results are collected keyword by keyword until maxResults is reached. A later keyword is only searched if the earlier ones did not already fill maxResults.	Falls back to 手机壳 when empty
sort	string	Optional	sales (best selling), priceHighToLow (price, high to low) or general (Taobao's general ranking). Price low to high is not offered.	sales
tmallOnly	boolean	Optional	Only products from Tmall stores.	false
minPrice	number	Optional	Only products priced at least this many yuan (inclusive). Minimum 0.	none
maxPrice	number	Optional	Only products priced at most this many yuan (inclusive). Minimum 0.	none
maxResults	integer	Optional	Maximum number of products to return in total for this run, from 1 to 5000. A single keyword returns at most about 1000 products, so higher totals need several keywords. The run stops as soon as it is reached. You are charged per product returned.	20

Example: best-selling products for one keyword

{
  "keywords": ["手机壳"],
  "sort": "sales",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Example: Tmall stores only, within a price range

{
  "keywords": ["蓝牙耳机"],
  "sort": "sales",
  "tmallOnly": true,
  "minPrice": 20,
  "maxPrice": 200,
  "maxResults": 100
}

Example: English keyword, most expensive first

{
  "keywords": ["phone case"],
  "sort": "priceHighToLow",
  "maxResults": 50
}

When you give several keywords, they are searched in order. The run only moves on to the next keyword when the earlier ones did not fill maxResults. With a small maxResults, the first keyword often fills it, and the later keywords are never searched.

Output example

One product record. Values are illustrative.

{
  "type": "product",
  "itemId": "123456789012",
  "url": "https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=123456789012",
  "searchKeyword": "手机壳",
  "title": "透明磁吸手机壳 适用iPhone 防摔全包超薄保护套",
  "titleEn": null,
  "subtitle": "镜头全包 不易发黄",
  "price": 59.0,
  "discountPrice": 49.0,
  "discountType": "特价秒杀",
  "salesText": "1万+",
  "salesCount": 10000,
  "commentCount": null,
  "isTmall": true,
  "shopId": "1000000001",
  "shopName": "示例数码旗舰店",
  "sellerLevel": 19,
  "sellerPositiveRate": 100.0,
  "descriptionRating": 4.84,
  "serviceRating": 4.88,
  "shippingRating": 4.9,
  "itemLocation": "广东 东莞",
  "sellerLocation": "广东 深圳",
  "stock": 25000,
  "imageUrl": "https://img.alicdn.com/imgextra/i1/1000000001/example-main.jpg",
  "imageUrls": ["https://img.alicdn.com/imgextra/i1/1000000001/example-2.jpg"],
  "spuId": "8000000001"
}

How much does it cost?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. These are the charge events:

Event	Price (USD)	When it is charged
run-start	$0.03	Once per run, charged when the first request to the data source succeeds, even if that request returns nothing. It is not charged when the data source fails from the start, or when your spending limit cannot cover it. Each further keyword the run actually reaches pays one more start fee. That fee is charged before the keyword's first request and is kept even if that keyword then fails or returns nothing. A later keyword is only reached when the earlier ones did not fill maxResults.
result	$0.008	For each product returned.

Worked examples:

• 100 products from one keyword cost $0.03 + 100 × $0.008 = $0.83.
• 100 products from two keywords, when the first keyword returns fewer than 100 and the run moves on to the second, cost 2 × $0.03 + 100 × $0.008 = $0.86. If the first keyword already returns 100 products, the second keyword is not searched and the run costs $0.83.

You never pay for more than maxResults items, and you are never charged for items that were not delivered. The run stops by itself if your spending limit is reached.

On the free Apify plan, a run returns at most 10 results in total; any paid Apify plan removes the limit. On the free Apify plan each account can run this Actor up to 3 times per 24 hours and 10 times per 7 days, within a small lifetime free allowance shared across all our Actors, and all free accounts share a daily free budget. When any of these limits is reached, the run stops before fetching anything and nothing is charged.

Use cases

• Price monitoring and competitor research: see how a product category is priced, which promotions run (discountType, discountPrice) and who sells the most (salesCount).
• Sourcing and product selection: find best-selling items per keyword, with shop quality at a glance through descriptionRating, serviceRating, shippingRating and sellerPositiveRate.
• Market research for cross-border sellers: see what sells on Taobao and Tmall before you list or source it.
• Brand and Tmall store tracking: use tmallOnly and isTmall to compare official Tmall stores with regular Taobao shops.
• Regional supply analysis: group products by itemLocation to see where items in a category ship from.
• AI and data projects: clean product records for catalogs, price models and recommendations.

Integrations and API

You can start runs from your own code through the Apify API, schedule them on the Apify platform (for example a daily price check), and send results to other tools with Apify integrations and webhooks. Results are stored in a dataset you can download as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Python example using the apify-client package:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("clover_folktale/taobao-scraper").call(run_input={
    "keywords": ["蓝牙耳机"],
    "sort": "sales",
    "tmallOnly": True,
    "minPrice": 20,
    "maxPrice": 200,
    "maxResults": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Tips and limits

• Reliability. The Actor retries transient errors on its own and stops cleanly instead of failing half-way. It never charges for items it did not deliver.
• Speed. A page holds 10 products, so large runs make many requests; expect roughly 2-5 seconds per page. Different pages of one search do not overlap.
• Run size. maxResults is the total for the whole run (1 to 5000, default 20). A single keyword returns at most about 1000 products (often fewer, when the search runs out of pages), so to get more you need several keywords. With several keywords, results are collected keyword by keyword until the total is reached, and later keywords are not searched once the total is filled.
• Sales counts. salesCount is the lower bound of the sales text: 1万+ becomes 10000, 1000+ becomes 1000. Taobao only gives rounded buyer counts in search results.
• Price filters. minPrice and maxPrice are in yuan and both inclusive. A narrow price range can return no products at all; widen the range if that happens.
• Nothing found. A search that finds nothing is skipped. If too many keywords return nothing, the run stops to protect your budget.
• Currency. Prices are in Chinese yuan (CNY) and are what Taobao shows at the time of the run.
• Sorting. Price low to high is not offered; use priceHighToLow, sales or general.
• Empty fields. commentCount and titleEn (the English title) are empty in search results. subtitle and sellerLocation are empty for many products. discountType is null when the product has no promotion.
• Free plan. On the free Apify plan a run returns at most 10 results in total; any paid Apify plan removes the limit.
• Privacy. Only public listing data is returned: what anyone sees on a Taobao search page, such as the shop name, its ratings and the item's ship-from location. No buyer data, no private shop data.

FAQ

Do I need a Taobao account, cookies or an API key?

No. No Taobao account, API keys, proxies or cookies are needed. You only need an Apify account to run the Actor.

Is this the official Taobao API?

No. This Actor is not affiliated with Taobao or Tmall. It is an independent tool that collects public search-result data and returns it as structured JSON, so you can use it as an alternative to building your own Taobao product search integration.

Is it legal to scrape Taobao?

The Actor only returns public listing data that anyone can see on a Taobao search page. It does not return buyer data, private shop data, phone numbers or messages. You are responsible for how you use the data and for following the laws and rules that apply to you.

How fresh is the data?

The data is collected live during each run. Prices, sales counts and stock are what Taobao shows at the time of the run.

Why are some fields empty?

Taobao search results do not include every field for every product. commentCount and titleEn are empty in search results, subtitle and sellerLocation are empty for many products, and discountType is null when there is no promotion.

Can I get reviews, SKUs or full product details?

No. This Actor works on keyword search results only. It returns the fields listed in the data table above.

How many results can I get?

You can set maxResults up to 5000 per run, but a single keyword returns at most about 1000 products, often fewer. To get more, add more keywords. On the free Apify plan a run returns at most 10 results in total; any paid plan removes the limit.

Can I schedule runs and export the data?

Yes. You can schedule runs on Apify, start them through the API, and export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Something is missing. How do I ask for it?

Missing a field or a filter? Open an issue from the Actor page and it will be looked at.

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