1688 Image Search Scraper

🚀 1688 Image Search Scraper: Find Chinese Suppliers by Photo

Find the factory behind any product photo. The 1688 Image Search Scraper runs a 1688 image search (the "以图搜货" / 拍立淘 photo search on 1688.com) for each picture you give it and returns the matching wholesale offers with factory prices in CNY, order and sales counts, repurchase rates and supplier details. It works from any language: no Chinese keywords, no 1688 account, no sourcing agent needed to search 1688 by image.

🎯 Use Cases

• Find a product by image on 1688: paste a photo from Amazon, TikTok Shop, AliExpress or Shopify and get the 1688 offers that sell the same or a similar item.
• 1688 dropshipping and private label sourcing: see the factory price, orders and repurchase rate of a product before you commit to it.
• Find Chinese suppliers by image: compare several suppliers of the same item by price, years on 1688, shop score, city and factory-inspection flags.
• Do your own 1688 sourcing-agent research: shortlist offers and shops first, then send your agent exact 1688 links instead of a photo.
• Wholesale price benchmarking: check what a product costs at the source in China against your retail or AliExpress price.
• Bulk reverse image search for catalogs: run hundreds of product photos in one go and export the matches to a spreadsheet.

✨ Features

• Search 1688 by image: paste any public image URL (a marketplace listing photo, a screenshot, your own product shot) or a base64 data: URL.
• Deep results: 60 matches per page and typically 600–700 matches per photo on 1688. Ask for as many as you need; each row has its rank and the photo's totalMatches.
• Sourcing data on every match: price in CNY, number of orders, quantity sold, buyer repurchase rate, a visual similarity score and 1688's listing tags.
• Supplier details: company name, seller ID, years on 1688, shop URL and shop score, province and city, factory-inspection, business-inspection and super-factory flags.
• Sponsored flag: 1688 mixes paid placements into image results. Every row says whether it is sponsored (isSponsored), and one switch removes them.
• Any common format: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF or AVIF up to 10 MB. Large photos are resized before the search to keep it fast.
• No duplicates within a photo: an offer is saved once per image, even when it shows up on two result pages.
• Fair billing: you pay per photo and per extra results page, not per row. Images that fail or have no matches are free.
• No 1688 account, login or cookies.

🛠️ How It Works

1. Add image URLs: one or many; each image is searched separately.
2. Choose how many matches you want per image, and whether to drop sponsored offers.
3. Run the scraper and get one row per matching 1688 offer, ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel or to pull through the API.

⚙️ Input

Field	What it does	Default
imageUrls	Public image URLs (or base64 data: URLs) of the products to search. Required.	none
maxResultsPerImage	How many 1688 matches to return per image, in 1688's ranking order. Usually up to about 600–700.	60
excludeSponsored	Keep organic matches only and drop 1688's paid placements.	false

{
    "imageUrls": [
        "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Cev2aFG5L._AC_SX695_.jpg",
        "https://cbu01.alicdn.com/img/ibank/O1CN01ImHZo51sn2AJ4qBDw_!!2009745810-0-cib.jpg"
    ],
    "maxResultsPerImage": 180,
    "excludeSponsored": true
}

💰 Pricing

Pay per photo searched, not per row. No monthly rental.

Event	Price
Image	$0.02 per image with matches. Includes the first page of up to 60 matches.
Results page	$0.01 per extra page of up to 60 matches for the same image.
Actor start	$0.00005 per run (one per GB of memory, so one at the default 1 GB).

Examples:

• One photo, 60 matches: $0.02 + $0.00005 start = $0.02005.
• One photo, 300 matches (first page + 4 extra pages): $0.02 + 4 × $0.01 = $0.06, plus the start fee.
• 100 product photos, 60 matches each: 100 × $0.02 = $2.00, plus the start fee.

Failed images and images without matches are free. With excludeSponsored on, reaching your number of organic matches can take one more page than the count suggests, because sponsored offers are removed from each page.

📊 Sample Output Data

A real row from a 1688 image search for a dog chew toy photo:

{
    "queryImage": "https://cbu01.alicdn.com/img/ibank/O1CN01ImHZo51sn2AJ4qBDw_!!2009745810-0-cib.jpg",
    "rank": 2,
    "offerId": "906989254338",
    "url": "https://detail.1688.com/offer/906989254338.html",
    "title": "宠物狗狗玩具洁齿磨牙耐咬玩具高颜值三环拉力环狗狗自嗨啃咬玩具",
    "price": 1.58,
    "currency": "CNY",
    "imageUrl": "https://cbu01.alicdn.com/img/ibank/O1CN01wuj9prefKlJ1chua_!!2217947155846-0-cib.jpg",
    "similarityScore": 0.74,
    "ordersCount": 4447,
    "soldQuantity": 16827,
    "repurchaseRatePercent": 64,
    "companyName": "义乌市喵鲸宠物用品有限公司",
    "yearsOnPlatform": 3,
    "sellerLoginId": "喵金莹宠物用品厂",
    "sellerMemberId": "b2b-2217947155846c11bd",
    "shopUrl": "https://shop4519892565078.1688.com",
    "shopScore": 4.5,
    "province": "浙江",
    "city": "义乌市",
    "isSponsored": false,
    "factoryInspection": false,
    "businessInspection": true,
    "superFactory": false,
    "tags": ["先采后付", "回头率64%", "7天无理由"],
    "totalMatches": 700,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-20T06:02:06.688Z"
}

rank follows 1688's own result order, which mixes visual similarity with sales and paid placement. similarityScore is 1688's relative visual match score: higher means a closer match, and it can go above 1, so sort by it if you want the closest look-alikes first. ordersCount is the number of orders and soldQuantity the number of units sold, as 1688 shows them. tags are 1688's listing badges in Chinese, such as 先采后付 (buy now, pay later), 7天无理由 (7-day no-reason returns) and 代发包邮 (dropshipping with free shipping).

Images that cannot be downloaded or decoded produce a free image_error row with the reason, and photos without matches a free no_matches row, so every input is accounted for.

🔁 Schedule and Integrate

For sourcing research, one run per product photo is enough. To watch prices and sales of the same items over time, run the same photos once a week (or daily for fast movers): each run is a dated snapshot you can compare by offerId. Set it up in Apify Schedules, and send the results to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, n8n or a webhook with Apify integrations, so new supplier matches land where your team already works.

🤖 Use with AI Agents (MCP)

This Actor works as a tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so an agent can find 1688 suppliers for a photo during a chat. An agent can call it with:

{ "imageUrls": ["https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Cev2aFG5L._AC_SX695_.jpg"], "maxResultsPerImage": 20 }

❓ 1688 Image Search FAQ

Does 1688 have an official API? 1688 runs an open platform for developers, but it needs a registered app and approval and mostly serves Chinese business accounts. This Actor needs no key, no app and no Chinese business registration: you send a photo and get the same public results a buyer sees in 1688's search by image, as structured data.

Can I use 1688 in English with this? You can search 1688 by image from any language, since a photo needs no keywords. Titles, company names and locations come back as 1688 shows them, in Chinese, and prices are in CNY. Run the titles through a translation step in your workflow if you need English.

Do I need a 1688 account? No. No login, cookies or account of any kind.

Why are some fields empty? Province and city are null when 1688 shows no location for the offer, which happens on roughly one row in five. New offers can have no orders or sales yet. Minimum order quantities and price ladders are not part of image search results; feed the offerId values into the 1688 Listings Scraper to get them.

How many results can I get per photo? 1688 returns up to about 600–700 matches per photo, 60 per page, and totalMatches on each row tells you how many it found. Set maxResultsPerImage to any number up to that.

How do I buy from 1688 once I find a supplier? Use the url and shopUrl from the results to contact the supplier on 1688, or hand the exact offer links to your sourcing agent or freight forwarder. Exact links make quotes faster and avoid mix-ups between look-alike products.

Can I search AliExpress or Alibaba by image instead? Yes, with the sister actors below. 1688 has the lowest factory prices but sells mostly inside China; AliExpress and Alibaba.com ship worldwide.

🔗 Related Scrapers

• AliExpress Image Search Scraper: find the same product on AliExpress by photo, with retail prices, ratings and units sold, to compare against 1688 factory prices.
• Alibaba Image Search Scraper: search Alibaba.com suppliers by photo, with US$ price ranges and MOQ for export sourcing.
• 1688 Listings Scraper: search 1688 by English or Chinese keyword or fetch the offer IDs you find here, with MOQ and tiered price ladders.
• Made-in-China Image Search Scraper: search Made-in-China.com suppliers by photo, with US$ price ranges and MOQ.
• Yiwugo Image Search Scraper: search the Yiwu wholesale market on Yiwugo by photo.