Ace Hardware Scraper

Scrape Ace Hardware — one of the largest hardware and home-improvement retail chains in the US. Browse any department (Tools, Lawn & Garden, Paint, Plumbing, Hardware, and more) or look up specific products by ID or URL. Get title, price, brand, category, description, images, customer rating/reviews, and stock availability — no login, cookies, or API key required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: browse a department/category, look up products by ID, or look up products by URL
• 15 top-level departments exposed as a dropdown, plus an advanced free-text sub-category URL override for granular browsing (e.g. "Power Tools > Cordless Drills")
• Filters: keyword, price range, minimum rating, brand, in-stock only, on-sale only
• Real pricing: current price, original list price, sale flag, and discount %
• Empty fields are omitted — every field in the output actually has data

Output per product

• productId — Ace Hardware's internal product/item code
• title, description, shortDescription
• brand
• department, category, categoryBreadcrumb[]
• price, currency, onSale, listPrice, discountPercent (when on sale)
• inStock, availability (In Stock / Out of Stock)
• upc, manufacturerPartNumber
• supportsDelivery, supportsInStorePickup
• rating (0–5), reviewCount
• countryOfOrigin — ISO country code (e.g. US, CN, VN)
• whatsInTheBox — box-contents description, for kits/bundles
• packageDimensions (length/width/height/unit), packageWeight (value/unit) — shipping measurements
• images[], mainImage
• features[] — marketing bullet points
• sourceUrl, productUrl
• recordType: "product", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byCategory	byCategory / byProductIds / byProductUrls
department	string	tools	Top-level department to browse (mode=byCategory)
categoryUrl	string	–	Advanced: any acehardware.com department/sub-category URL, overrides department
keyword	string	–	Only keep products whose title/description/brand/category contains this text
productIds	array	–	Numeric product IDs (mode=byProductIds)
productUrls	array	–	Full product page URLs (mode=byProductUrls)
minPrice / maxPrice	number	–	Price range in USD
minRating	number	–	Minimum customer rating (0–5); drops unrated products
inStockOnly	boolean	false	Only emit purchasable/in-stock products
onSaleOnly	boolean	false	Only emit products currently discounted below list price
brand	string	–	Only keep products from a matching brand
maxItems	integer	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–500)

Example: browse Tools, cordless items only, under $300, in stock

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "department": "tools",
  "keyword": "cordless",
  "maxPrice": 300,
  "inStockOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: a specific sub-category

{
  "mode": "byCategory",
  "categoryUrl": "https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/power-tools/powered-screwdrivers",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: lookup by product ID

{
  "mode": "byProductIds",
  "productIds": ["2192375", "2611648", "70555"]
}

Use cases

• Price monitoring — track price and discount changes for specific SKUs over time
• Assortment research — see which brands and products a department carries
• Market research — compare hardware/home-improvement pricing across retailers
• Inventory alerts — filter inStockOnly to catch back-in-stock items
• Catalog enrichment — pull structured product data (images, specs, ratings) for a set of known product IDs

FAQ

Do I need to log in or provide cookies? No. Every field is scraped from public, unauthenticated pages.

Does this cost extra for proxies? No. The actor runs without any proxy configuration on Apify's free datacenter access.

Can I search acehardware.com by free-text keyword sitewide? Not directly — see Limitations below. Use the keyword filter together with mode=byCategory to search within a department, or use byProductIds/byProductUrls if you already know the products.

Why is discountPercent missing on some products? It's only included when the product is actually on sale (current price below the list price). Full-price products correctly omit it rather than showing 0.

Why is rating missing on some products? Not every product has customer reviews yet. Fields that can't be populated with real data are omitted rather than filled with placeholders.

What departments are available? Tools; Lawn & Garden; Outdoor Power Equipment; Paint & Supplies; Plumbing; Hardware; Lighting & Electrical; Heating & Cooling; Home & Decor; Building Supplies; Storage & Organization; Outdoor Living; Automotive, RV & Marine; Grills & Smokers; Ace YardRx.

Can I browse a narrower sub-category than the top-level department? Yes — paste any acehardware.com category page URL into categoryUrl (advanced field), and the actor resolves it automatically.

Limitations

• Sitewide free-text search is not supported. acehardware.com's /search page is disallowed in robots.txt and is protected by a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge that blocks every zero-cost access method (plain HTTP and browser-impersonation requests alike). Category browsing (with the in-category keyword filter) and direct product ID/URL lookup are used instead, and reliably return full pricing and product data.
• Only products currently listed on acehardware.com are returned; discontinued/delisted items are not available.
• Pricing, availability, and ratings reflect the online storefront at scrape time and may differ from in-store pricing at a specific Ace location.