# Market Categories Scraper (`parseforge/market-categories-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes product categories from Market.com, returning each category name, URL, and subcategories. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/parseforge/market-categories-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ParseForge](https://apify.com/parseforge) (community)
- **Categories:** E-commerce
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.07 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

[![ParseForge](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ParseForge/apify-assets/main/banner.jpg)](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp)

### Market Categories Scraper

**Scrape product categories from Market.com, up to a million per run.** Every category comes with its name, URL, and subcategories. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Market.com is a product comparison site that organizes thousands of products into categories like Dash Cams, Keyboards, and more. But manually browsing and copying those categories is slow and error-prone. This scraper reads the homepage navigation and returns every category and subcategory in a clean, structured dataset.

| Who uses it | What they scrape Market.com for |
|---|---|
| E-commerce analysts | Which product categories Market.com lists for competitive benchmarking |
| SEO specialists | The category structure to inform their own site taxonomy |
| Data scientists | A clean list of categories for training product classification models |
| Market researchers | The breadth of product categories available on a major comparison site |

### What it does

This Actor collects product categories from Market.com by crawling the homepage navigation, and returns each category as a flat row with its name and URL.

- 🖥️ **Homepage crawl:** Starts from the Market.com homepage and extracts all visible category links.
- 🔗 **Custom start URL:** Point the scraper at any Market.com page to extract its category navigation.
- 📦 **Bulk export:** Get results as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML for direct use in spreadsheets or databases.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

### What you can do with Market.com data

**📊 Benchmark competitor category structures.**

An e-commerce manager runs the scraper monthly to see how Market.com organizes its product categories and spots new categories added by competitors.

**🔍 Build a product taxonomy for your store.**

A web developer uses the scraped category list as a starting point to design the navigation for a new online store.

**📈 Train a product classification model.**

A data scientist feeds the category names and URLs into a machine learning pipeline to automatically classify products from other sources.

**📋 Monitor category changes over time.**

A market researcher runs the scraper weekly and compares the output to track when Market.com adds or removes product categories.

### Why choose this scraper

| | What you get |
|---|---|
| **Category name** | The display name of the product category as shown on Market.com |
| **Category URL** | The direct link to that category page on Market.com |
| **Subcategories** | Any child categories nested under the parent, listed as a comma-separated string |

### Configure the run

Drive the Actor from the default homepage or a custom Market.com URL. The scraper reads the navigation tree and returns only the categories it finds, so you get a clean list every time. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

```json
{
 "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
 "maxItems": 10
}
```

A larger pull:

```json
{
 "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
 "maxItems": 200
}
```

### Pricing

Pay-per-result: **$0.0045 per result** collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $0.45 |
| 1,000 results | $4.50 |
| 10,000 results | $45.00 |

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

### Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. [Upgrade your Apify plan](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp) to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

### Run it

1. [Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp).
2. Open the [Market Categories Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/market-categories-scraper?fpr=vmoqkp).
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click **Start**.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the **Dataset** tab.

Run it programmatically through the [Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2) (`run-sync-get-dataset-items`) or the [ApifyClient](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js) for JavaScript and Python.

### Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Market.com through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/market-categories-scraper"
```

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

### Troubleshooting

**Why am I getting no results?**

Check that the start URL is a valid Market.com page. The scraper only extracts categories from the navigation tree; if the page has no navigation, no results will be returned.

**The scraper returns fewer categories than I expected.**

Market.com may load some categories dynamically via JavaScript. This scraper reads the initial HTML; if categories are loaded later, they may not be captured. Try increasing the max items or using a different start URL.

**Can I scrape product details inside each category?**

No. This scraper only extracts the category names and URLs. For product-level data, you would need a different scraper that visits each category page.

**The run fails with a timeout error.**

Market.com may be slow or blocking the request. Reduce the max items or try again later. If the issue persists, contact support.

### FAQ

| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What data does this scraper return? | It returns each product category found on the Market.com homepage navigation, including the category name, its URL, and any subcategories nested under it. |
| Do I need an API key or login? | No. Market.com is publicly accessible, and the scraper reads the HTML directly without any authentication. |
| Can I scrape more than the homepage? | Yes. You can set a custom start URL to any Market.com page, and the scraper will extract the category navigation from that page. |
| How many categories can I scrape? | Free users get a preview of up to 10 items. Paid users can scrape up to 1,000,000 items per run. |
| What export formats are supported? | You can export the results as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML. |
| Does the scraper follow pagination on category pages? | No. This scraper focuses on the category navigation tree itself, not the products within each category. |
| Is this scraper allowed by Market.com? | Scraping public data for personal or research use is generally acceptable, but you should review Market.com's terms of service and robots.txt before running large-scale scrapes. |
| Can I scrape subcategories? | Yes. The scraper captures any subcategories listed under a parent category in the navigation. |

### Related actors

Browse the full [ParseForge collection](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp) for more scrapers.

🆘 **Need help?** Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ **Disclaimer.** This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Market.com. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.

# Actor input Schema

## `startUrl` (type: `string`):

The Market.com URL to start crawling. The homepage navigation is the default starting point.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Free users: Limited to 10 items (preview). Paid users: Optional, max 1,000,000

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
  "maxItems": 10
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Complete dataset of all scraped records.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
    "maxItems": 10
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/market-categories-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
    "maxItems": 10,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("parseforge/market-categories-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "startUrl": "https://www.market.com",
  "maxItems": 10
}' |
apify call parseforge/market-categories-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,parseforge/market-categories-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/0ZaWlPT2n2eOTejjY/builds/hx6oKi2i8jA5GgeIR/openapi.json