Vanden Borre Scraper

Scrape the full product catalog from VandenBorre.be — Belgium's biggest electronics retailer, part of the Fnac Darty group. TVs, laptops, smartphones, kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaners... around 13,000 products in total.

The short version

Vanden Borre's website runs on Algolia search. This actor queries their Algolia index directly via HTTP — no browser needed. That means it's fast (the entire 13,000-product catalog takes about a minute) and cheap (under $0.10 in compute).

Getting started

The simplest run: leave all fields empty, set maxResults to 15000, and you get everything. Or narrow it down:

Field	Type	Description
searchQuery	String	Keyword search. Works the same as the search bar on vandenborre.be
category	String	Filter by product family, e.g. Tv, Smartphone, Laptop, Koelkast, Wasmachine, Vaatwasser, Droogkast, Stofzuiger, Smartwatch
brand	String	Filter by brand (case-insensitive, stored as uppercase). SAMSUNG, APPLE, BOSCH, MIELE, LG, PHILIPS, HP
maxResults	Integer	How many products to return (default: 100, max: ~15,000)
language	String	nl or fr — switches to the Dutch or French Algolia index
includeSpecs	Boolean	Pull the full technical spec sheet per product (default: true). Turn off for smaller output
proxyConfiguration	Object	Not strictly needed since we're hitting Algolia, but available for large runs

You can combine category and brand — e.g., all Samsung TVs: category: "Tv" + brand: "SAMSUNG".

Output

{
    "name": "SAMSUNG QLED 4K 55 INCH QE55Q80DATXXN (2024)",
    "brand": "SAMSUNG",
    "price": 749.99,
    "currency": "EUR",
    "originalPrice": 999.99,
    "ean": "8806095509716",
    "sku": "7680124",
    "productId": "7680124",
    "inStock": true,
    "deliveryInfo": "Beschikbaar",
    "rating": 4.65,
    "reviewCount": 31,
    "imageUrl": "https://image.vandenborre.be/WEB/images/products/300/samsung_qled-4k-55q80d-2024-_7680124_1.jpg",
    "specs": {
        "Screendiagonalinch": "55 \"",
        "Screenresolution": "3840 x 2160 pixels (4K UHD)",
        "Displaytype": "QLED",
        "Smarttv": "Ja  Tizen",
        "Hdmiinputs": "4x HDMI 2.1",
        "Hdrcompatibility": "HDR10  HDR10+  HLG  Quantum HDR+",
        "Energyclass": "D"
    },
    "category": "Tv en audio > Televisie > Tv",
    "categories": ["Electronics", "Video", "Televisions"],
    "url": "https://www.vandenborre.be/lcd-led-oled-tv/samsung-qled-4k-55-inch-qe55q80datxxn-2024",
    "language": "nl",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-03-16T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Field notes

• price is the shelf price excluding Recupel (recycling fee). Recupel is typically 1-15 EUR extra depending on product category. The raw Algolia data includes price.recupel but this actor reports the base price only.
• deliveryInfo is Vanden Borre's availability text — usually "Beschikbaar", "Tijdelijk niet beschikbaar", or "Op bestelling".
• specs keys are cleaned up from Algolia's internal format (the raw keys look like "1088||SCREENDIAGONALINCH"). They're title-cased but concatenated — Screendiagonalinch rather than Screen Diagonal Inch. Good enough for programmatic use; you might want to pretty-print them for display.
• categories is the Algolia taxonomy path. category is the human-readable breadcrumb from the site's product family hierarchy.

Performance

This is one of the cheapest actors to run. Everything goes through Algolia's CDN:

• 100 products: ~2 seconds, ~0.001 CU
• 1,000 products: ~5 seconds, ~0.005 CU
• Full catalog (13,000): ~60 seconds, ~0.01 CU

No browser, no rendering, no session management. Just HTTP GET requests.

Limitations

• The Algolia API key is embedded in Vanden Borre's frontend JavaScript. It's publicly accessible, but they could rotate it — if the actor suddenly returns zero results, that's likely the cause.
• Some very new or clearance products may have incomplete specs or missing EAN codes.
• The actor doesn't fetch individual product detail pages — everything comes from the Algolia search index. This means you won't get the full long-form product description that appears on the product page.