Abt Electronics Scraper

Scrape Abt.com — a major US electronics and appliance retailer (Glenview, IL, family-owned since 1936) with openly displayed pricing and stock status. Search by keyword, browse curated computer/TV/audio/gaming/camera/networking categories, or fetch specific products by URL or SKU. Get price, brand, SKU/model/MPN, availability, images, description and dimensions. No login, no cookies, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (keyword search), byCategory (browse a curated department), byUrl (direct product URL or bare SKU/ID lookup)
• 88 categories across computers/tablets, TVs & home theater, home & car audio, headphones, cameras & camcorders, gaming, networking, and wearables
• Filters: minimum/maximum price, brand contains, in-stock only
• Client-side sort: relevance (site order), price low-to-high/high-to-low, name A-Z/Z-A
• fetchFullDetails: opt in (mode=search/byCategory) to fetch each result's product-detail page for the full field set (sku, mpn, gtin, availability, condition, dimensions, etc.) at the cost of a slower per-product Playwright fetch; mode=byUrl always returns full details
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears on a record when Abt actually published a value for it

Output per product

• title — full product name
• brand, brandUrl
• sku, model, mpn, gtin, productId — Abt's own model/part numbers
• price, currency, currencySymbol
• originalPrice, savings, discountPercent — Abt's list/MSRP price and the discount off it, when the item is marked down (omitted when Abt sells it at its list price)
• availability (InStock / OutOfStock), inStock (boolean), availabilityText (Abt's own stock-status label)
• condition — NewCondition / RefurbishedCondition / etc.
• color
• description
• quickFeatures[] — short bullet spec highlights shown on the listing card
• category, categoryPath[] — breadcrumb trail
• images[], mainImageUrl, thumbnailUrl
• heightIn, widthIn, depthIn, weightLb — physical dimensions, when Abt publishes them
• sellerName, returnPolicyDays
• freeShipping — true when the listing shows a free-shipping badge
• sourceUrl — canonical Abt.com product URL
• recordType: "product", scrapedAt

Note: sku, mpn, gtin, availability/inStock, condition, description, images[], dimensions/weight, originalPrice/savings/discountPercent, categoryPath[], sellerName and returnPolicyDays come from the product-detail page. mode=byUrl always includes them. mode=search/byCategory only include them when fetchFullDetails is enabled — by default those modes return the faster listing-page field set (title, price, brand, model, quickFeatures[], thumbnailUrl, availabilityText, freeShipping).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byCategory / byUrl
searchQuery	string	bluetooth speaker	Free-text keyword search (mode=search)
categoryId	string (select)	415 (Laptops & Notebook Computers)	Curated Abt category (mode=byCategory)
productUrls	array	–	Abt product URLs or bare SKU/ID numbers (mode=byUrl)
minPrice	int	–	Drop products priced below this amount (USD)
maxPrice	int	–	Drop products priced above this amount (USD)
brand	string	–	Keep only products whose brand contains this text
inStockOnly	boolean	false	Keep only products Abt currently lists as in stock
fetchFullDetails	boolean	false	(mode=search/byCategory) Fetch each result's detail page for the full field set, slower per product
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	relevance / priceAsc / priceDesc / nameAsc / nameDesc
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–500)

Example: keyword search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "bluetooth speaker",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: browse a category with a price ceiling

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "categoryId": "2804",
  "maxPrice": 150,
  "inStockOnly": true,
  "sortBy": "priceAsc",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: filter search results to one brand

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "4k tv",
  "brand": "Samsung",
  "sortBy": "priceDesc",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: lookup specific products by URL or SKU

{
  "mode": "byUrl",
  "productUrls": [
    "https://www.abt.com/LG-18-000-BTU-11.9-EER-230-208V-Smart-Window-Air-Conditioner-LW1821ERSM/p/156637.html",
    "232163"
  ]
}

Use cases

• Price monitoring — track a category or a watch-list of SKUs for price/stock changes over time
• Market research — compare brand assortment and pricing across electronics categories
• Competitive intelligence — benchmark a retailer's catalog breadth against your own
• Deal alerting — combine maxPrice + inStockOnly to surface in-budget, in-stock items
• Catalog enrichment — pull structured product data (brand, model, MPN, dimensions) for cross-referencing

FAQ

Is this affiliated with Abt Electronics? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads Abt.com's publicly served product pages. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Abt Electronics Inc.

Does Abt.com require a store or ZIP code to see prices? No. Unlike some regional/warehouse retailers, Abt shows price and stock status to anonymous visitors without requiring a store or ZIP selection, so results are consistent regardless of location.

Does this show discounts / list price? Yes. When Abt marks an item down from its list price (MSRP), the record includes originalPrice (the list price), savings (dollar amount off) and discountPercent. These three fields are omitted when Abt is currently selling the item at its list price — there's no discount to report.

Are ratings and review counts available? Not currently. Abt renders its star ratings and review counts through a client-side JavaScript widget that isn't present in the page's initial HTML, so this actor doesn't expose rating/reviewCount fields rather than emit unreliable data.

Why does search mode cap out around 20 results even with a higher maxItems? Abt.com's own keyword-search results page does not paginate past its first ~20 matches through any publicly available parameter — its "page 2, 3, ..." links are wired to a script that Abt explicitly disables on the search-results page itself. This is a genuine limitation of Abt's search endpoint, not a limit imposed by this actor. byCategory mode does not have this limitation — Abt's category browse pages paginate correctly through their full catalog, so use byCategory (optionally combined with brand) when you need more than ~20 results for a given department.

Why does a single-word search sometimes return nothing? When a searchQuery strongly matches one department (e.g. laptop, tv), Abt redirects the search straight to that department's browse landing page rather than a search-results list, and a couple of Abt's top-level department landing pages don't carry a product grid of their own. Use a more specific query (bluetooth speaker, gaming laptop) or switch to byCategory mode with a specific category instead.

Why isn't there a sortBy value that changes what Abt itself returns? Abt's own sort query parameter doesn't affect its server-rendered listing pages. sortBy is applied to the collected batch of results instead, which is fully reliable and deterministic.

What categories are covered? Abt sells appliances, furniture and mattresses in addition to electronics. This actor's categoryId dropdown is curated to Abt's electronics-relevant departments — computers & tablets, TVs & home theater, home & car audio, headphones, cameras & camcorders, gaming, networking, and wearables.

How fresh is the data? Every run reads Abt.com live — prices and stock status reflect what's published at run time.

Can I look up a product by just its SKU number? Yes. In byUrl mode, productUrls accepts either a full Abt product URL or a bare numeric SKU/ID (e.g. 156637), which Abt resolves to the correct product page.

Why do some runs take a bit longer than a typical scraper? Abt.com actively challenges automated traffic. This actor clears that challenge automatically on every request, which adds a few seconds per product compared to a plain HTTP fetch — a 20-product search typically completes in under 3 minutes.

Why do some products have fewer fields than others? Fields are only included when Abt actually publishes a value — for example, not every product has published physical dimensions, or a mpn distinct from its sku. Empty fields are omitted rather than sent as null.

Why don't my search/byCategory results include sku/availability/condition/dimensions? Those fields live on the product-detail page, not the listing page. Set fetchFullDetails: true to fetch each result's detail page for the complete field set — it's off by default because Abt serves a Cloudflare challenge on every detail page that costs an extra ~10-17s per product to clear. mode=byUrl always fetches the detail page, so it always returns the full field set regardless of this setting.