Alibaba Product Search Api

What does Alibaba Product Search API do?

Alibaba Product Search API turns one product phrase into structured results from Alibaba. Enter a phrase such as earpiece for phone; the Actor requests the relevant Alibaba search page through GeoNode, parses the returned markdown, and saves products, prices, order requirements, suppliers, images, and available sales counts to an Apify dataset. Run it from the Input tab, then use Apify's dataset API, schedules, integrations, monitoring, and export tools to put the results into your workflow.

GeoNode is the only service that fetches Alibaba for this Actor. The Actor processes GeoNode's markdown locally, so you receive clean, structured records without maintaining a scraper server yourself.

Why use Alibaba Product Search API?

Use the Actor for supplier discovery, sourcing research, price comparison, catalog enrichment, and product-market analysis. It preserves the values displayed on Alibaba while adding numeric values that are easier to filter. For example, price can remain $0.15-0.20, while price_min and price_max support reporting and database queries.

How to scrape Alibaba product data

1. Configure GEONODE_SCRAPER_API_KEY as a secret environment variable in the Actor's Apify Console settings.
2. Open the Actor's Input tab and enter one phrase in Search text.
3. Start the run.
4. Open the Dataset when the run completes, or retrieve it through the Apify API.

Each run processes one Alibaba results page, commonly around 60 product cards, and saves every valid product parsed from that page. Pagination is not included in this version.

Input

searchText is the only input field. It is required and contains one Alibaba product search phrase.

The API key is intentionally not an input. For local development, copy .env.example to .env and set GEONODE_SCRAPER_API_KEY; .env is ignored by Git. The npm start command loads that local file when present. In Apify Cloud, configure the same environment variable as a secret instead. Never commit or expose the key.

Output

Each result is one product. You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

{
    "name": "Flexible 3.5mm Wired Music Color ABS Earphones",
    "product_url": "https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/...html",
    "price": "$0.15-0.20",
    "price_min": 0.15,
    "price_max": 0.2,
    "min_order": "1000 pieces",
    "supplier": "Shenzhen Guideray Electronic Co., Ltd.",
    "units_sold": "5,601"
}

Alibaba product data fields

Field	Description
name	Product title from the search card.
product_url	Canonical Alibaba product page URL.
image_url	Main product image when available.
price, price_min, price_max	Displayed price plus parsed numeric bounds.
min_order, min_order_quantity, min_order_unit	Displayed and normalized minimum order.
supplier, units_sold	Supplier name and displayed sold count, when present.

Pricing and cost estimation

How much does it cost to scrape Alibaba?

Each completed Alibaba search lookup costs $0.10 through Apify's Pay-Per-Event pricing. One lookup covers one GeoNode request and one Alibaba results page. The Actor stores the source markdown and dataset rows before it charges one search-lookup event, and it checks the Apify run spending limit before starting the request.

Configure this price in the Apify Console, not in code: add custom event search-lookup at $0.10. Remove the apify-default-dataset-item synthetic event or set it to $0 so product rows are not charged separately. GeoNode usage is billed by your GeoNode account according to its plan.

Tips and advanced options

Use a focused phrase to improve relevance. If no products are parsed, inspect the raw-markdown key-value record; it preserves the provider response for diagnostics. GeoNode manages its own purchased-thread capacity: requests beyond the available thread allowance are queued by GeoNode. The Actor deliberately has no concurrency or batch setting, so each run corresponds to one independent search lookup.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

This Actor is intended for lawful business research. You are responsible for complying with Alibaba's terms, robots guidance, applicable laws, and your GeoNode account terms. Search layout and availability can change, so fields may occasionally be missing and units_sold is nullable. Use the Actor's Issues tab for questions or feature requests; custom sourcing, enrichment, and multi-page collection solutions can be developed separately.