Shopify Store Products Scraper & Price Change Monitor

What it does

This Actor reads the public catalog of any Shopify store straight from the storefront JSON that every Shopify shop exposes (/products.json, optionally /collections.json) and turns it into clean, flat records: one per variant by default (price, compare-at price, availability, SKU, barcode, options, image, weight) or one per product. Point it at one store or a hundred; it paginates each store 250 products at a time, normalizes prices to numbers, builds canonical product URLs and stamps every record with fetchedAt.

Switch it to changes mode and it becomes a price and stock monitor: it keeps the previous snapshot of each store in a key-value store you name, diffs the new catalog against it and writes only what changed, with before/after values and the percentage price move. Typical users are competitor price trackers, dropshippers and resellers watching supplier stock, brand teams auditing MAP compliance, affiliate and deal sites, and analysts building catalog datasets. There are no browsers, proxies or API keys involved, so it is cheap and fast, and the output is available as JSON, CSV, Excel, through the Apify API, webhooks, or the Apify MCP server for AI agents.

How to use

1. Enter one or more Shopify store URLs (bare domains like allbirds.com or any URL on the store).
2. Pick a Mode: snapshot for the full catalog, changes to receive only price, stock, title and new/removed product events compared with the previous run. Optionally set Granularity, Max products per store and a Webhook URL.
3. Click Start (or schedule it daily). Records appear in the dataset as they are saved; download them or consume them via API, integrations or MCP.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
storeUrls	string[]	yes	Stores to scrape; domains or any store URL, reduced to the origin
mode	snapshot | changes	no	Full catalog (default) or only changes since the last run
granularity	variant | product	no	One record per variant (default) or per product
maxProductsPerStore	integer	no	Pagination cap per store (default 5000)
includeCollections	boolean	no	Add a collections array of collection handles to each record (extra requests)
stateStoreName	string	no	Key-value store holding snapshots for changes mode (default shopify-catalog-monitor-state)
webhookUrl	string	no	POST target for the run summary and change sample

Output example

Variant record (recordType is snapshot, or baseline on the first changes run):

{
  "recordType": "snapshot",
  "storeDomain": "www.allbirds.com",
  "productId": "7000000000001",
  "productHandle": "wool-runner",
  "productTitle": "Wool Runner",
  "vendor": "Allbirds",
  "productType": "Shoes",
  "tags": ["sneakers", "wool", "men"],
  "productUrl": "https://www.allbirds.com/products/wool-runner",
  "createdAt": "2024-02-20T09:00:00-07:00",
  "updatedAt": "2026-10-10T08:30:00-07:00",
  "publishedAt": "2024-03-01T10:00:00-07:00",
  "variantId": "41000000000001",
  "variantTitle": "Natural Grey / 9",
  "sku": "WR-GREY-9",
  "barcode": null,
  "price": 98,
  "compareAtPrice": 120,
  "available": true,
  "inventoryQuantity": null,
  "option1": "Natural Grey",
  "option2": "9",
  "option3": null,
  "imageUrl": "https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/.../wr-grey.jpg",
  "grams": 600,
  "requiresShipping": true,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-16T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Change record (changes mode, from the second run on). changeType is one of new-product, removed-product, new-variant, removed-variant, price-changed, availability-changed, title-changed; all current variant fields from above are included as well:

{
  "recordType": "change",
  "changeType": "price-changed",
  "changedFields": ["price"],
  "before": { "price": 98, "compareAtPrice": 120 },
  "after": { "price": 88.2, "compareAtPrice": 120 },
  "percentChange": -10,
  "detectedAt": "2026-10-17T12:00:00.000Z",
  "storeDomain": "www.allbirds.com",
  "productTitle": "Wool Runner",
  "variantTitle": "Natural Grey / 9",
  "price": 88.2,
  "available": true,
  "productUrl": "https://www.allbirds.com/products/wool-runner"
}

Error items look like { "storeDomain": "example.com", "recordType": "error", "error": "PASSWORD_PROTECTED", "errorMessage": "..." } with codes NOT_SHOPIFY, PASSWORD_PROTECTED, BLOCKED (HTTP 403), RATE_LIMITED, EMPTY_CATALOG, FETCH_FAILED or INVALID_STORE_URL. They are charged like one product record, because the work to discover the problem was done.

Pricing

Pay per event. You only pay for records the Actor writes; set a maximum cost per run in the run options to cap spend.

Event	Price	Notes
Product or variant scraped	$0.001	Per record in snapshot mode and per baseline record on the first changes run; error items too
Change detected	$0.0005	Per change record in changes mode
Actor start	$0.00005	Apify platform event

Examples: 1,000 variants ≈ $1.00. A daily check of a 500-variant store that changes 20 prices ≈ $0.01 + start fee (the first run writes the 500-record baseline for $0.50).

Limits and fair use

• Requests to each store are spaced about 500 ms apart with bounded retries on 429/5xx, so a 5,000-product store takes roughly 15–20 s; two stores are processed in parallel.
• Only the public storefront JSON is read. Inventory quantities are not exposed by most stores and are null unless the store publishes them.
• Stores that are password-protected, not on Shopify, or that block datacenter traffic with a WAF return an error item; this Actor does not use residential proxies or browsers to get around that.
• maxProductsPerStore truncates the listing; in changes mode removals are not reported for a truncated store to avoid false "removed" events.
• Snapshots live in the key-value store named by stateStoreName, one key per store and granularity. Delete the key (or use a new store name) to start a fresh baseline.

Related Actors

Other pay-per-event Actors from the same account, all limited-permission and agent-friendly:

• Website Change Monitor — Sitemap & Page Content Diff — sitemap and page content changes for stores and brands that are not on Shopify.
• Domain WHOIS, DNS, Email Security & TLS Checker — detect which domains in a list run on Shopify before you monitor them.
• Bluesky Posts, Profiles & Followers Scraper — brand and product mentions, profiles and followers on Bluesky.

FAQ

Does this need proxies or an API key? No. It reads the public products.json endpoint that Shopify serves for every storefront, using plain HTTP from Apify's standard infrastructure.

How is cost controlled? Set maxProductsPerStore and the run's maximum total charge. The Actor charges each record as it is written and stops cleanly when the limit is reached; in changes mode it then keeps the old snapshot so the next run re-detects anything it could not emit.

Why does the first changes run write so many records? There is nothing to compare against yet, so the full catalog is stored as baseline records (charged at the product rate). From the next run on you only receive change events.

What exactly counts as a change? Price, compare-at price, availability, product title and variant title per variant (per product with granularity: product), plus products and variants that appear or disappear. A brand-new product is one new-product event, not one per variant.

Can I run it on a schedule or from an AI agent? Yes. Use Apify Schedules for daily monitoring, call it from the API, or let agents discover it through the Apify MCP server; it is pay-per-event and uses limited permissions.

Which fields can I filter on? recordType (snapshot, baseline, change, error), changeType, storeDomain, vendor, productType, tags, available, price.

Legal

This Actor accesses only data the store publishes to every visitor and respects per-host rate limits. Use the data in compliance with the store's terms and applicable law. It collects no personal data, is not a consumer reporting agency, and its output must not be used for employment, credit, insurance, or tenant screening decisions.