AliExpress Product Scraper

What does AliExpress Product Scraper do?

AliExpress Product Scraper extracts product data from AliExpress.com - keyword search results and full product detail pages - anonymously, no login, no AliExpress account, no API key. Two operations live in one actor: search for products by keyword, or look up full detail for one or many product IDs.

Why use this Actor?

• Price tracking - schedule productDetails on a cron and diff consecutive runs to catch price drops.
• Market research / assortment mapping - search gives you ranked results for any keyword, with price, sold count, and store info.
• Batch, one start fee - pass a list of keywords or product IDs and one run covers all of them.

How to use it

1. Pick an Operation: Product Search or Product Details.
2. Fill the matching field:
   • Search → query (e.g. coffee maker) or queries for a batch.
   • Product Details → productId (e.g. 1005005452938708) or a full item URL, or productIds for a batch.
3. Optionally set maxItems to cap total rows.
4. Click Start.

There is no page cap on search by default - it follows a query through to AliExpress's own reported result count. Batch a lot of keywords and this can produce a very large run; use maxItems to bound it.

Batch fields (queries/productIds) win over their singular counterparts when filled; duplicates and blanks are dropped automatically.

Input

Field	Type	Description
operation	string (required)	One of: search, productDetails.
query / queries	string / array	Search keyword(s). Required by search.
productId / productIds	string / array	A numeric AliExpress product ID (e.g. 1005005452938708) or a full item URL. Used by productDetails.
maxItems	integer	Caps total rows returned across the run. First 10 rows are free. Leave blank for no cap.
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional - leave blank to let the Actor pick a sensible per-operation default. See Why a real browser only for productDetails? and Why does search use a US proxy but productDetails doesn't? below.

Why a real browser only for productDetails?

Live-verified (2026-08-25): a plain, cookie-less HTTP request to an AliExpress search page (/w/wholesale-{query}.html) returns the full result set server-side-rendered into an embedded JSON blob (window._dida_config_._init_data_) - no bot protection was encountered at all, so search runs on a lightweight CheerioCrawler. Product detail pages are different: the page ships with an empty window.runParams = {} and an explicit window._d_c_.isCSR = true flag - AliExpress renders the actual product data entirely client-side after load. So productDetails drives a real headless browser instead, purely to let that client-side render complete.

Why does search use a US proxy but productDetails doesn't?

AliExpress geo-detects the requesting IP and returns pricing in the local currency - a non-US IP in testing got Nepali Rupee (NPR) pricing on the exact same product a US visitor sees in USD. For search, a US-pinned residential proxy fixes this with no downside, so it's the default.

For productDetails, root-caused 2026-08-25: pinning to a US proxy instead reliably redirects the browser from aliexpress.com to a different domain, aliexpress.us (with a re-mapped product ID), which carries its own obfuscated JS bot-challenge that never resolved in testing - on top of that page's already-slow client-side render under residential-proxy latency. Without a US pin, the browser reliably stays on aliexpress.com and the page renders (just in whatever currency the exit node's actual country implies, surfaced honestly via the currency field). So this Actor's default proxy config is US-pinned for search only; productDetails gets a country-unpinned residential proxy unless you override proxyConfiguration yourself.

Output

One flat row per item. Search rows carry search-result fields; product-detail rows carry the full page. Every row has _operation and status (success or error) so you can split/filter a mixed export.

Search row example:

{
    "_operation": "search",
    "productId": "1005005452938708",
    "title": "Welhome / WPM Electric coffee bean grinder Coffee machine WPM coffee machine cafeteras electricas Niche Zero WPM espresso",
    "price": 89.99,
    "listPrice": 199.99,
    "currency": "USD",
    "soldCount": 8,
    "image": "https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/Sa334b8a3b1964e3db600830d59a180e6q.jpg",
    "productUrl": "https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005452938708.html",
    "query": "coffee maker",
    "status": "success"
}

Product detail row example:

{
    "_operation": "productDetails",
    "productId": "1005005452938708",
    "title": "Welhome / WPM Electric coffee bean grinder Coffee machine WPM coffee machine cafeteras electricas Niche Zero WPM espresso",
    "price": 89.99,
    "currency": "USD",
    "storeName": "Coffee machine Store",
    "storeUrl": "https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1102188075",
    "soldCount": 8,
    "image": "https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/Sa334b8a3b1964e3db600830d59a180e6q.jpg",
    "images": ["..."],
    "specs": { "Power Source": "Electric", "Model Number": "Niche Zero" },
    "productUrl": "https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005452938708.html",
    "status": "success"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing - one small run-start charge, then a per-row charge for each search result or product-detail lookup. See the Pricing tab for current rates. Failed lookups land as status: "error" rows and are never charged. There is no page cap - search runs to AliExpress's own reported result count for each keyword unless you set maxItems.

Limitations

• No review scraping. AliExpress fetches reviews via a separately signed API (mtop.aliexpress.review.pc.list) - live-verified 2026-08-25: from a non-US proxy the reviews section renders "Due to our system upgrades, this content is currently unavailable in your region" for an anonymous visitor (not a bot-block, the site's own message), and from a US-pinned proxy the whole page instead lands on the bot-walled aliexpress.us gateway (see above) before reviews would even be reachable. No anonymous, reliable path to review content was found in this session, so there's no companion review Actor for AliExpress.
• Only the numbers/text AliExpress shows to an anonymous, logged-out visitor are available.
• No item-level star rating is available - the search cards and product page checked in live verification only expose a "sold count" and store-level "Positive Feedback %", not a per-item 1-5 star rating; rating is not part of this Actor's output for that reason (rather than emitting an always-null field).
• The product image gallery (images) can come back sparse - only the class-name prefix used for gallery thumbnails was verified live, and AliExpress's PDP layout varies somewhat by category.
• AliExpress's embedded JSON key names and CSS class-name prefixes can drift over time; a redesign may need an update.
• productDetails is meaningfully slower and less reliable than search: its client-side render can take well over 20s under a residential proxy's added latency, and this Actor retries (up to 10 times, with a fresh proxy session each time) rather than failing fast - a single call can take a few minutes in the worst case, though it self-heals. See Why does search use a US proxy but productDetails doesn't? for the root cause.

FAQ

Does AliExpress have a public API? The AliExpress Open Platform API exists but requires an approved dropshipping/affiliate partner account, not general scraping. This Actor gets you search and product data anonymously, no approval process.

Do I need an AliExpress account or API key? No - it runs entirely against AliExpress's public, logged-out web pages.

Why did I get non-USD pricing? For search, make sure proxyConfiguration is left blank (or explicitly US-pinned) - see Why does search use a US proxy but productDetails doesn't? above. For productDetails, non-USD pricing is the expected tradeoff of the default (unpinned) proxy - pin proxyConfiguration to US yourself if you'd rather accept the slower, less reliable render in exchange for USD pricing.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by Alibaba Group / AliExpress. It only accesses data AliExpress serves publicly to anonymous visitors. Use it in compliance with AliExpress's Terms of Use and applicable law in your jurisdiction. Found a bug or have a feature request? Use the Issues tab on this Actor's page.