Costco Australia Product Scraper

This Apify Actor allows you to scrape product data, categories, and detailed item information from Costco Australia for price monitoring, product research, market research, availability tracking, and competitive analysis.

Features

• Product Search: Search for products using keywords, sort options, and facet filters.
• Category Scraping: List products within a specific category.
• Detailed Item Info: Get full specifications, pricing, and availability for a single product.
• Category Tree: Explore the Costco category hierarchy.
• Multi-Method HTTP Fallback: Automatically tries multiple HTTP clients (httpx, cloudscraper, tls_client, curl_cffi) for maximum success rate.
• Proxy Support: Integrated Apify proxy support with country filtering (AU recommended).
• Browser Cookies Support: Integration with camoufox for enhanced bypass capabilities.
• User-Agent Randomization: Random User-Agent selection for reduced detection risk.
• Retry Logic: Automatic retry with exponential backoff for blocked requests.
• Standardized Infrastructure: Built on shared apify-wave1 runtime for consistency across actors.

Operation Guide

1. Product Search

Provide a Search Query (e.g., "coffee") to get a list of matching products. You can refine results using Sort and Filters.

2. Category Scraping

Provide a Category Code (e.g., cos_21.1.2) to fetch all products in that category. You can also combine this with a search query to search within a category.

3. Item Details

Provide a Product Code (e.g., 100087 or a product URL) to get exhaustive details for a single item.

4. Category List

Provide a Parent Category ID or Category Level to get a list of categories. Use Refresh Categories to force reload from sitemap and Include Non-COS Categories to include brand/promo buckets.

Examples

You can copy and paste these JSON inputs into the Apify Actor's "JSON" editor for quick testing.

Search for "Olive Oil"

Returns a list of olive oil products sorted by relevance.

{
  "operation": "search",
  "query": "olive oil",
  "limit": 10,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "proxyCountry": "AU"
}

Search for Samsung TVs in Electronics

Returns Samsung TVs filtered by a specific category code.

{
  "operation": "search",
  "query": "tv",
  "categoryCode": "cos_21",
  "filters": ["Brand:Samsung"],
  "sort": "price_asc",
  "limit": 5,
  "proxyCountry": "AU"
}

Fetch Specific Product Details

Gets full specifications for a product using its code.

{
  "operation": "item",
  "productCode": "100087",
  "proxyCountry": "AU"
}

List Top-Level Categories

Returns the main category structure of the site.

{
  "operation": "categories",
  "level": 1,
  "limit": 20,
  "proxyCountry": "AU"
}

List Sub-categories of a Parent

Returns direct children of a specific category.

{
  "operation": "categories",
  "parentId": "cos_2",
  "limit": 50,
  "proxyCountry": "AU"
}

Input Fields

Field	Required	Description	Example
operation	Required	Operation to perform: search, category, item, or categories	search
query	Optional	Text search query	tv
categoryCode	Optional	Costco category code or URL	cos_21.1.2
productCode	Optional	Product code, slug or URL	100087
parentId	Optional	Parent category ID for listing categories	cos_2
level	Optional	Category depth level	1
limit	Optional	Max items to return	20
page	Optional	Page number	1
sort	Optional	Sort order (relevance, price_asc, etc.)	price_asc
filters	Optional	Facet filters (FacetName:FacetValue)	Brand:Samsung
details	Optional	Include richer normalized fields	false
refresh	Optional	Refresh category cache from sitemap	false
includeNonCos	Optional	Include non-standard category codes	false
rawQuery	Optional	Raw Costco query expression	tv:relevance

Output Fields

Each product item includes:

• id: Product code.
• name: Product name.
• brand: Brand name.
• price: Current price.
• discount_price: Discounted price.
• currency: Currency (AUD).
• source_url: URL to product page.
• image: Main product image.
• images: List of all product images.
• in_stock: Stock availability boolean.
• description: Full product description.
• attributes: Detailed specifications (materials, dimensions, weight, etc.).
• breadcrumbs: Category hierarchy.

Proxy & Bot Protection

Costco AU uses bot protection. We recommend using Apify Proxy with AU country.

• Auto: Automatically handles proxy selection (currently defaults to Apify proxy).
• Direct: Bypasses proxy.
• Custom: Uses a provided custom proxy URL.

The actor includes automatic retry logic with exponential backoff for blocked requests (403, 429, 502, 503) and invalid JSON responses.

Pricing

• Actor Start: $0.005 per run
• Dataset Item: $0.0004 per item

Free/trial users are limited to 10 result requests per day.

Limitations

• This scraper is unofficial and not affiliated with Costco.
• Costco may change their API structure without notice.
• Some products may have incomplete data depending on source availability.
• Category codes may change over time; use the categories endpoint to discover current codes.
• High-volume scraping may trigger rate limiting or blocking.

Disclaimer

This scraper is unofficial and not affiliated with Costco. Users are responsible for complying with Costco's terms of service and applicable laws.