Sainsbury's UK Grocery Scraper

Extract structured Sainsbury's UK grocery products, prices, availability, categories, reviews, recommendations, and product batches. Use the data for price monitoring, assortment research, product discovery, promotion tracking, and catalogue enrichment.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an unofficial tool for accessing public Sainsbury's UK grocery data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Sainsbury's in any way. Use responsibly and respect rate limits and site changes.

Why use this scraper?

• Monitor current, unit, and previous prices where publicly exposed.
• Research product availability, promotions, and assortment changes.
• Export products, categories, reviews, and recommendations as JSON, CSV, Excel, or through the Apify API.
• Resolve multiple known product slugs in one ordered batch.

Supported Modes

• search: Search for products by keyword
• item: Get product information by SEO slug
• category: Get products in a category
• categories: Get the category tree
• taxonomy: Get the product taxonomy
• recommendations: Get product recommendations
• reviews: Get product reviews
• batch: Process multiple product slugs in one run

Supported Data

• current price
• unit price
• previous price where genuinely exposed
• availability
• product identity
• promotions where exposed

Not Supported In This Version

• Nectar pricing
• personalized "Your Nectar Prices"
• postcode-specific pricing
• store-specific pricing
• paid-proxy portability guarantee

Input Schema

Common Fields

• mode (required): The operation mode
• proxyConfiguration (optional): Proxy configuration object

Mode-Specific Inputs

search

• query (required): Search keyword
• Default page size: 60
• maxResults (optional): Result cap, default 60, maximum 600
• maxPages (optional): Page cap, default 1, maximum 10
• pageStart (optional): Starting page, default 1

item

• productSlug (required): Product SEO slug, for example gb/groceries/sainsburys-british-semi-skimmed-milk-2-27l-4-pint
• Must be raw, not percent-encoded

category

• query (optional): Search keyword within category
• categoryId (optional): Category ID
• Default page size: 60
• maxResults, maxPages, and pageStart use the same bounded pagination contract as search

categories

No additional inputs required

taxonomy

No additional inputs required

recommendations

• productId (required): Product ID
• Default limit: 18

reviews

• productId (required): Product ID
• Default limit: 10

batch

• items (required): Non-empty array of product SEO slugs
• Processes each slug independently
• Returns both successful and failed results

Output Schema

Dataset Envelope

Each Dataset record includes:

• mode: Actor mode that generated the record
• success: Whether the operation succeeded
• recordType: Type of record (product, category, taxonomy, recommendation, review, error)
• data: Record data when success=true
• error: Error details when success=false
• warnings: Warning messages
• source: Endpoint identifier (E1-E7)
• fetchedAt: ISO 8601 timestamp

Key-Value Store Summary

The run summary is stored in KVS under the summary key:

• status: Run status
• mode: Actor mode executed
• count: Number of records generated

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify Pay per event pricing. The current price for your plan is shown by Apify before you start a run.

• Every row written to the default Dataset is a billable result.
• A structured error row produced for an invalid item inside a batch is also a billable Dataset item.
• Run summaries stored in the default key-value store are not billed separately.

Pricing And Location Disclosure

• Status: DEFAULT_OR_UNKNOWN_PRICE_CONTEXT unless explicitly verified
• Postcode-specific pricing: Not supported
• Store-specific pricing: Not supported
• Availability and prices: Can change over time
• Nectar pricing: Not included in this version

Proxy and access behavior

Direct access is the proven default. Optional Apify proxy configuration can be supplied for blocked or location-sensitive runs, but paid-proxy portability is not guaranteed. Keep result and page limits bounded to reduce upstream load.

Error Handling

Error Types

• validation_error: Invalid input such as unsupported mode or missing required field
• http_error: HTTP error response such as 400, 403, 404, or 500
• transport_error: Network or transport failure such as timeout or DNS failure

Batch Behavior

• Processes each item independently
• Returns both successful and failed results
• Preserves duplicate valid inputs and valid input order
• Does not fail the entire run on individual item failures

Zero-Row Cases

• Recommendations may validly return zero rows
• Reviews may validly return zero rows

Usage Examples

Search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "milk"
}

Item

{
  "mode": "item",
  "productSlug": "gb/groceries/sainsburys-british-semi-skimmed-milk-2-27l-4-pint"
}

Batch

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "items": [
    "gb/groceries/sainsburys-british-semi-skimmed-milk-2-27l-4-pint",
    "gb/groceries/sainsburys-british-whole-milk-2-27l-4-pint"
  ]
}

Limitations

• No real-time data guarantee
• No nationwide uniform price guarantee
• No postcode-specific pricing
• No store-specific pricing
• No paid proxy portability guarantee