Mercado Libre Catalogue by Category

Pulls every product on a Mercado Libre category listing across five Latin American storefronts (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia), one row per product with price, seller, shipping label, sales volume text and a sponsored flag. Built for brands and marketplace sellers who need the whole shelf of a category in its real order.

Login: optional

No account is needed. Mercado Libre walls the plain-HTTP replay of a session with its account-verification page (/gz/account-verification), so the actor reads listings through a real browser on a residential exit in the market's country, which the site serves anonymously.

If Mercado Libre walls the browser too (it can tighten this at any time), you can run as your own logged-in session: log in at https://www.mercadolivre.com.br (or your market's site), export the cookies with Cookie-Editor or EditThisCookie (Export → JSON, or paste the raw Cookie: header name1=value1; name2=value2) into the optional sessionCookies input, and keep the proxy in the account's country (BR, MX, AR, CL or CO). With cookies set the actor holds one sticky exit for the whole run. The field is stored encrypted by Apify, values are never logged (only the count and cookie names), and only cookies for the market's own domain (e.g. mercadolivre.com.br for br) are used.

If the wall still appears, the run stops with one of two messages: "… requires a logged-in session … Supply sessionCookies …" (no cookies were given) or "… supplied session is logged out / expired — re-export cookies …" (cookies were attached but the site still walled them; log in again and export a fresh set). Use an account you own and respect Mercado Libre's terms of use.

What you get

• Complete coverage page by page, with category, page and position on every row.
• Seller-level visibility: seller is the store behind the listing, which makes a category a competitive map.
• Price with the discount split out: price, original_price when reduced, and currency per market.
• is_sponsored per row, from the "Patrocinado" advertising component on the card.
• Demand straight from the listing: sold_text is the site's sales count text and shipping the delivery promise.
• Both identifiers the site uses, catalog_id and item_id, plus labels for card badges and parent_category when subcategories are on.

Input

Give it listing category paths or full listing URLs plus a market.

{
  "categories": ["/beleza-cuidado-pessoal/cuidados-com-cabelo-shampoo/"],
  "locale": "br",
  "maxPages": 1,
  "expandSubcategories": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "BR"
  },
  "delayMs": 1200,
  "callsPerSession": 60
}

• categories (required): listing paths such as /beleza-cuidado-pessoal/cuidados-com-cabelo-shampoo/ or URLs such as https://lista.mercadolivre.com.br/celulares-telefones/.
• locale: br, mx, ar, cl or co. Default br.
• maxPages: pages per category. 0 means every page. Listings are paged at 48 products.
• expandSubcategories: also crawl the children from the department menu.
• sessionCookies (optional, secret): your logged-in Mercado Libre cookies, as a Cookie-Editor / EditThisCookie JSON export or a raw Cookie header. Only needed if the site walls anonymous browsing; see Login: optional.
• proxyConfiguration: residential inside the market's own country. Required. The default is BR. Use the country the account belongs to.

Output

One dataset row per product, in listing order.

{
  "platform": "mercadolibre",
  "locale": "br",
  "category": "/beleza-cuidado-pessoal/cuidados-com-cabelo-shampoo/",
  "page": 1,
  "position": 1,
  "id": "MLB1234567890",
  "catalog_id": "MLB1234567890",
  "item_id": "MLB9876543210",
  "name": "Shampoo Anticaspa 400ml",
  "price": 39.9,
  "original_price": 59.9,
  "currency": "BRL",
  "rating": 4.7,
  "in_stock": true,
  "is_sponsored": true,
  "seller": "Loja Exemplo",
  "sold_text": "+1 mil",
  "shipping": "Frete grátis",
  "labels": ["MAIS VENDIDO"],
  "product_url": "https://www.mercadolivre.com.br/p/MLB1234567890",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-12T03:00:00.000Z"
}

Values above are illustrative: they follow the shape of an anonymous Brazilian residential test run. Field names are exactly what the actor writes. brand is null on most rows because the cards rarely publish one, and rating_count is always null because the card shows only an average.

Use cases

• Seller mapping: group seller by position to see which stores control the top of a shelf.
• Price and discount tracking per market from price, original_price and currency.
• Demand ranking from sold_text, to separate listings that rank well from listings that sell.
• Ad share from is_sponsored paired with position and seller.
• Free-shipping penetration from shipping, a major ranking factor here.

Notes and limits

• A residential proxy inside the market's country is required. Listings are read in a browser because the site walls plain HTTP; if it walls the browser as well, the run stops with a message naming the wall, never an empty result, and sessionCookies from your own logged-in browser is the way past it.
• Listing pages hold 48 organic products plus sponsored cards, so maxPages: 10 is about 480+ per category; Mercado Libre stops paging at 42 pages (2,000 results). For anonymous visitors Mercado Libre renders bare category paths (e.g. /beleza-cuidado-pessoal/, /celulares-telefones/celulares-smartphones/) as landing pages with a few carousel cards; the actor reports those as non_listing_pages instead of emitting carousel rows. Use a listing URL as the site shows it after you narrow a category, e.g. /beleza-cuidado-pessoal/cuidados-com-cabelo-shampoo or /celulares-telefones/celulares-smartphones/novo/.
• Only listing paths are accepted. A path that is not a lista or listado path is counted in failed_categories.
• Currency follows the market and prices are normalised to numbers: BRL, MXN, ARS, CLP, COP.

FAQ

Do I need a proxy? Yes, residential inside the market's country: BR, MX, AR, CL or CO. The input defaults to BR. Without it the site serves a login wall. If you supply sessionCookies, use the account's country.

How many results can I get? maxPages: 0 walks the category at 48 products per page.

Does it need a login or an API key? No. It works anonymously through the browser. sessionCookies is an optional fallback for when Mercado Libre walls anonymous traffic.

What happens if the category is blocked? The run fails loudly with the blocked URL and the country the proxy should be in, so a block is never mistaken for an empty category.