# Takealot Price & Stock Watch (South Africa) (`superslowsloth/takealot-products`) Actor

Search Takealot.com by keyword and get one flat row per product: price in ZAR, was-price, saving, stock status, ships-from, rating, reviews, brand, image, URL. Sort by price or rating; filter by brand and price band. For South African price and stock watching.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/superslowsloth/takealot-products.md
- **Developed by:** [Superslow Sloth](https://apify.com/superslowsloth) (community)
- **Categories:** E-commerce, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.56 / 1,000 product scrapeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
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.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## 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.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Takealot Price & Stock Watch (South Africa)

Search [Takealot](https://www.takealot.com), South Africa's largest online
retailer, for one or more terms and get one flat row per product: price in
South African rand, the was-price when Takealot shows one, the saving, the stock
status in Takealot's own words, which distribution centres can ship it, rating,
review count, brand, image and the product URL. Run it on a schedule and diff
the dataset to get a **Takealot price-drop and back-in-stock watch**, or read a
whole category for South African price comparison and market research.

No account, no API key, no login, no browser. One request returns 36 products.

### Input

| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| `searchTerms` | One or more search terms, one per line. Required. A product found by two terms is returned once, under the first. Takealot matches loosely: a model number can still return hundreds of related products. |
| `maxItems` | Products to read per search term (default 100, up to 10,000). 36 per page. |
| `sort` | `relevance` (default), `price-asc`, `price-desc`, `rating`. |
| `brand` | Only this brand, spelled and capitalised exactly as Takealot does (`Hisense`, `Russell Hobbs`). One brand. A brand that does not exist returns no results, not everything. |
| `minPrice`, `maxPrice` | Price band in whole rand, inclusive, either end optional. |
| `proxyConfiguration` | Apify proxy by default. |

#### About the sorts

The sorts are Takealot's own and the actor checks each one: Takealot answers a
sort name it does not know with HTTP 200 and the default order, so the actor
reads the sort the response says it applied and fails the term (at no charge)
rather than return mis-sorted rows.

- The **price** sorts use Takealot's price index, which can differ from the
  price on the row for a stale listing. In a measured price-descending page, one
  out-of-stock product priced R1,389 sat among R3,500 ones.
- The **rating** sort is not a strict sort on the star figure. A 5.0 from a
  handful of reviews ranks below a 4.9 from hundreds (measured), so the head of
  the list is well rated and well reviewed.

#### About the price band and brand

The band is applied by Takealot against its own price index, not by the actor,
so a few rows - mostly out-of-stock ones - can sit outside it (1 of 40 measured
for R3,000 to R4,000). Brand is an exact, case-sensitive match.

### Output

Prices are numbers in rand (`currency` is read from the record, `ZAR`).

| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| `query` | The search term that first found this product. |
| `product_id`, `url`, `tsin` | Takealot's product id (the `PLID` number), the `https://www.takealot.com/<slug>/PLID<id>` link, and the id of the winning offer. |
| `title`, `subtitle`, `brand` | As Takealot shows them. `brand` is null on products Takealot lists without one (100 of 360 in a sample over ten searches). |
| `price` | The price Takealot shows. With several offers ("From R 549") it is the lowest. |
| `prices` | Every offer price, lowest first. One entry normally, two or more for "From R ..." products. |
| `list_price` | Takealot's was-price, the figure the saving is measured against. **Null when Takealot sends none** - 160 of 360 products in a sample over ten searches - never 0. |
| `saving_text` | The saving as worded: `26%`, `Up to 42%`. "Up to" means the best of several offers. |
| `stock_status` | Takealot's availability wording, verbatim: `In stock`, `Ships in 5 - 7 work days`, `Supplier out of stock`. |
| `in_stock`, `lead_time` | Takealot's own flags. `in_stock` is false for every "Ships in ..." product; `lead_time` is true for them. |
| `can_add_to_cart`, `is_preorder`, `imported` | Takealot's flags. `can_add_to_cart` is false on multi-offer products and out-of-stock ones. |
| `ships_from` | Distribution centres that can ship it (`CPT`, `DBN`, `JHB`). Empty for lead-time and out-of-stock products. |
| `delivery_estimate` | Takealot's delivery text (`Delivery 11 Oct - 13 Oct`). It moves with the day the run happens, so do not diff on it. |
| `rating`, `review_count` | Star rating out of 5 and the review count. Takealot sends a rating of 0.0 when there are no reviews; that is **null** here, with `review_count` 0. |
| `image_url`, `image_count` | The main photo (large product-page rendition) and how many Takealot has. |
| `badges`, `promotion_id` | The text of promotion badges (`26% off`) and the campaign id behind the badge image. |
| `authors`, `format` | Books only (`Paperback / Softback`). Empty and null elsewhere. |

#### Honest nulls

A field Takealot did not send is `null`, never `0` or `""`. `list_price`,
`saving_text`, `rating`, `brand`, `subtitle` and `delivery_estimate` are null
when the source has nothing; `review_count` is 0 only when Takealot says so.

### Pricing

Pay per event:

- **$0.002** per run (`actor-start`), charged only after your input is
  validated, so a run that fails on bad input costs nothing.
- **$0.00056** per product row written (`product-scraped`), i.e. $0.56 per
  1,000 products.

### How it fetches

It calls the JSON API behind Takealot's own site
(`api.takealot.com/rest/v-1-12-0/searches/products`), 36 products per request.
Paging uses a cursor: each page returns `next_is_after`, passed back as
`after=`. Measured 2026-10-11: HTTP 200 from a plain connection and from an
Apify datacenter exit, no key or cookie needed, and a 162-page walk (5,826
products) with no rate limit. A 403, 429 or 5xx is treated as a refusal: the
actor rotates to a fresh address and retries. An HTTP 400 (an empty term, an
unparseable filter) is permanent and is not retried.

Things worth knowing, all measured:

- **Counts.** `total_num_found` is exact up to a point, then reads "5000+". A
  walk of a broad term kept going past that, so the actor follows the cursor to
  the end or to `maxItems`, whichever comes first, and stops at 300 pages
  (10,800 products) per term. A log line names any term cut off at that limit.
- **Loose matching.** Takealot ORs the words of a term, so `tardis mug` returns
  hundreds of products. Use a `brand` or a price band to narrow a term.
- **Cursors are Takealot's.** A made-up or stale cursor is answered with page 1
  again and HTTP 200; the actor stops a term as soon as a page brings nothing new.
- **Counts move.** Products are added and sold between requests, so a walk can
  show a product twice across a page boundary; it is returned once.
- **Not offered.** `rows` (page size), `page` and `start` are ignored by the
  source, so there are no inputs for them.

# Actor input Schema

## `searchTerms` (type: `array`):

What you would type into Takealot's search box, one term per line (for example air fryer, samsung galaxy s24 or hisense 6l air fryer). Each term is searched and read separately. A product that two terms both find is returned once, under the first. Takealot matches loosely, so a precise model number can still return thousands of related products; add a brand or price band to narrow it.

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

Read at most this many products for each search term. Takealot serves 36 per page. Up to 10,000 per term are accepted; the longest search measured ran to 5,826 products.

## `sort` (type: `string`):

The order Takealot lists the results in. 'Relevance' is Takealot's own default. The price sorts follow Takealot's own price index, so a stale row (often an out-of-stock product) can sit slightly out of order. The rating sort puts well-reviewed, highly rated products first and is not a strict sort on the star figure.

## `brand` (type: `string`):

Only products of this brand, exactly as Takealot spells it and with the same capital letters (for example Hisense or Russell Hobbs). One brand only. A brand that does not exist returns no results rather than everything. Leave empty for every brand.

## `minPrice` (type: `integer`):

Lowest price to return, in whole South African rand, inclusive. Leave empty for no lower bound. Takealot applies the band itself against its own price index, so a few rows (often out-of-stock ones) can sit outside it.

## `maxPrice` (type: `integer`):

Highest price to return, in whole South African rand, inclusive. Leave empty for no upper bound. Combine it with a minimum to read past a broad search's size by slicing it into price bands.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify proxy (automatic datacenter exits) is the default. A refused request (403, 429) is retried from a fresh address, which is what the proxy is for.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchTerms": [
    "air fryer"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `items` (type: `string`):

No description

# 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 = {
    "searchTerms": [
        "air fryer"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("superslowsloth/takealot-products").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 = {
    "searchTerms": ["air fryer"],
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("superslowsloth/takealot-products").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 '{
  "searchTerms": [
    "air fryer"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call superslowsloth/takealot-products --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,superslowsloth/takealot-products"
        }
    }
}
```

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/fsag3df45mmegebN7/builds/DdrhI8TjKRU5w0caM/openapi.json