Shopify Hidden API Spy — Zero-DOM Product & Price Intelligence

Extract every product, variant, price, image, and tag from any Shopify store via hidden JSON API. Zero DOM, zero browser — never breaks. Includes sale detection (compareAtPrice/hasSale/discountPercent), collection filter, password detection, launch velocity, price range, tag cloud, theme detection, SEO metadata, installed apps, and review analytics at $0.01/1k results.

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Why This Actor

Most Shopify scrapers use Puppeteer or Playwright to render pages, parse HTML classes, and extract data from DOM elements. The moment a store changes its theme or installs a layout app, those selectors break — costing you time and compute budget.

This Actor takes a different approach: it calls Shopify's internal JSON API (products.json) — the same endpoint Shopify itself uses to power every storefront on the internet. This API never changes, never breaks, and returns clean structured data regardless of theme, plugins, or design updates.

Features

• Zero DOM / Zero Browser — pure fetch calls, no Puppeteer, no headless Chrome, no selectors to break
• Hidden JSON API — taps into https://[store]/products.json?limit=250&page=N for raw product data
• Password Protection Detection — checks x-shopify-stage header to detect password-protected stores
• Bulk Processing — accepts a single URL or an array of stores for batch intelligence runs
• Launch Velocity — counts products published in the last 30 days to measure store activity
• Price Range Analysis — calculates min, max, and average variant prices across the entire store
• Tag Cloud — aggregates and ranks the top 15 SEO tags used across all products
• Product Type Breakdown — identifies the top 5 product categories by volume
• Variant SKU & Inventory — per-variant SKU, price, inventory quantity, and availability status
• Full Product Images — array of all product images plus main image shortcut
• Product Descriptions — raw HTML body for AI pipelines and SEO analysis
• Collection Mapping — maps each product to its store collections
• Store Name Extraction — pulls store name from homepage <title> tag
• Auto-Retry & Timeout — built-in retry with exponential backoff for transient failures
• Theme Detection — identifies the Shopify theme (Dawn, Debut, etc.) via Shopify.theme HTML injection
• SEO Metadata Extraction — retrieves meta description, og:title, og:description, og:image from homepage
• Review Analytics — extracts aggregate rating and total review count from JSON-LD structured data
• Installed Apps Detection — scans homepage for 20+ known Shopify app scripts (Yotpo, Klaviyo, Gorgias, etc.)
• Store Metadata — fetches shop name, currency, country, locale via /meta.json
• Tech Stack Detection — identifies CDN provider, payment gateways, analytics tools, live chat, newsletter services, review platforms, and loyalty programs
• Proxy Fallback — transparently falls back to Apify residential proxy on 403/429

Use Cases

Who	Why
E-commerce Competitor Analysts	Monitor competitor pricing, new product launches, and catalog size
Dropshippers	Find winning products by analyzing top-selling Shopify stores
Brand Managers	Track brand presence, product mix, and SEO strategy of competitors
Market Researchers	Build product catalogs and price databases at scale
AI/ML Pipelines	Feed product data into recommendation engines or pricing models

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
shopifyUrl	string	—	Single target Shopify store URL (e.g. gymshark.com)
shopifyUrls	array	—	Bulk list of store URLs for batch processing
maxProducts	integer	500	Max products to extract per store (250 per API page)

Either shopifyUrl or shopifyUrls must be provided.

Input Example

{
  "shopifyUrl": "gymshark.com",
  "maxProducts": 200
}

Bulk mode:

{
  "shopifyUrls": ["gymshark.com", "allbirds.com", "warbyparker.com"],
  "maxProducts": 500
}

Output

Each product record:

Field	Type	Example
id	integer	6745123456789
title	string	"Glow Skin Serum V2"
handle	string	"glow-skin-serum-v2"
vendor	string	"Beauty Vendor"
productType	string	"Cosmetics"
bodyHtml	string	"<p>Product description...</p>"
createdAt	string	"2026-05-10T08:30:00Z"
collections	array	["Skincare", "Best Sellers"]
images	array	["https://cdn.shopify.com/img1.jpg", "..."]
mainImage	string	https://cdn.shopify.com/...
variants	array	[{title, sku, price, inventoryQuantity, available}]
totalVariants	integer	3
minPrice	number	29.99
maxPrice	number	39.99
tags	array	["serum", "skincare", "organic"]
isNewlyLaunched30Days	boolean	true

A _summary entry is appended per store with aggregate intelligence:

Field	Description
storeName	Store name extracted from homepage title
totalProducts	Number of products extracted
totalVariants	Total variant count across all products
totalCollections	Number of collections found
globalMinPrice	Cheapest variant across the store
globalMaxPrice	Most expensive variant
avgVariantPrice	Average price across all variants
newlyLaunched30Days	Products published in the last 30 days
launchVelocity30Days	Average new products per day (30-day window)
themeName	Shopify theme name (e.g. Dawn, Debut)
themeRole	Theme role (main, mobile, etc.)
metaDescription	Homepage meta description
ogTitle	Open Graph title tag
ogDescription	Open Graph description
ogImage	Open Graph image URL
overallRating	Aggregate rating from JSON-LD structured data
totalReviews	Total review count from JSON-LD
appsInstalled	Detected Shopify apps (Yotpo, Klaviyo, etc.)
currency	Store currency from /meta.json
country	Store country from /meta.json
myshopifyDomain	MyShopify domain from /meta.json
topTags	Top 15 SEO tags with frequency counts
topProductTypes	Top 5 product types by volume
techStack	Detected CDN, payment providers, analytics, newsletter, live chat, review, loyalty tools
proxyUsed	Whether Apify proxy was needed to bypass rate limiting

How It Works

Shopify Store → HTTPS test → Detect password protection → products.json pagination → Collection mapping → Product Mapping → Intelligence Summary

1. Normalizes the store domain
2. Sends a test request to detect password protection or non-Shopify stores
3. Paginates through products.json (250 products per page) with auto-retry until all products or maxProducts limit is reached
4. Maps each product to its store collections via collections.json and smart_collections.json
5. Enriches output with variant details (SKU, inventory, availability), full image array, and HTML body
6. Computes competitive intelligence: launch velocity, price range, tag cloud, and product type stats

Pricing

$0.01 per 1,000 results. One result = one product record. Lightweight fetch-only architecture keeps compute costs near zero. A store with 500 products costs less than a cent to scrape.

Quick Start

curl -X POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/foxpink~shopify-hidden-api-spy/runs \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "shopifyUrl": "gymshark.com",
    "maxProducts": 200
  }' \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/foxpink~shopify-hidden-api-spy/runs?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN"

Compatibility

• 100% Node.js (18+)
• No browser, no headless, no DOM
• No external scraping libraries — pure fetch API
• ESM (ECMAScript Modules)