1688 Image Search API: Photo to Factory Matches and Prices

What does 1688 Image Search API do?

1688 Image Search API turns a product photo into a ranked list of 1688.com offers that look like it. 1688 is Alibaba Group's wholesale marketplace for buyers inside China, and it is where a large share of factories post their lowest quotes. Send image URLs taken from Amazon, Shopify, Temu, AliExpress or your own shop. Each match comes back as one row with the wholesale price in CNY, minimum order, units sold and the supplier that posted it: company name, seller type, province and city, years on 1688, inspection badges, repeat-buyer rate and service score.

It is a 1688 search by image API that works without an account, a cookie or a phone check. Requests go over plain HTTP without a browser, several photos run at once, and one photo can return as many as 600 organic listings. The price is $0.004 per photo plus $0.40 per 1,000 matches. Sponsored listings, photos without a match and photos that fail cost nothing.

Not affiliated with 1688.com or Alibaba Group. How you use the data is your responsibility: follow 1688's terms and your local law.

Why use it?

• 🏭 Trace a product to its maker: a competitor's listing photo becomes a list of 1688 sellers offering that item, each with its wholesale price.
• 💰 Work out the margin before ordering: put the 1688 price next to the retail price on Amazon, Shopify or AliExpress.
• 🔎 Shortlist suppliers quickly: rows carry the seller type (manufacturer or wholesaler, when 1688 states it), the years on 1688 and the share of buyers who reorder.
• 🚫 Sponsored listings kept out: a share of every 1688 image results page is paid placement, often a fifth of the page or more. Those rows are dropped by default and never billed.
• 🤖 Ready for agents and pipelines: flat JSON, the same keys in every row, and one free error row for each photo that could not be searched.

How is it different from other 1688 image search Actors?

• Depth: as many as 600 organic listings for one photo, where a fixed top 20 is common.
• No base fee per run beyond Apify's $0.00005 start event, so one photo costs the same alone as in a batch of 1,000.
• You pay for organic matches only. Sponsored rows are free when you ask for them, and a photo that returns nothing but sponsored rows is free too.
• Supplier checks inside the match row: seller type, inspection badges, reorder rate and service score arrive without a second request per product.
• Shortcut for 1688 pictures: an image that already sits on cbu01.alicdn.com is searched by its address, with no upload step.
• Safe to interrupt: a run that Apify restarts, or that you resurrect, continues where it stopped and bills no photo or match twice.

What data can it extract?

Field	Description
inputImage	The photo URL you sent
offerId, offerUrl	1688 listing ID and link
title	Listing title (Chinese)
price, currency	Entry price on the listing card, in CNY
minOrderQuantity	Minimum order
soldCount, salesText, bookedCount	Units sold (number and 1688's own text) and order count
matchScore	Raw similarity number from 1688. Its scale changes from photo to photo and it does not follow the rank, so use position for order
companyName, supplierLoginId, memberId, shopUrl	Supplier
businessType	manufacturer, wholesaler, agent or service; null when 1688 does not state it (about a quarter of rows)
supplierProvince, supplierCity, yearsOnPlatform	Supplier location and years on 1688
factoryInspection, businessInspection, superFactory	1688 audit badges
repurchaseRate, tradeServiceScores, serviceTags	Reorder rate, service score, service labels
imageUrl	Listing photo
isAd	true on a sponsored row (these appear only with "Include paid ads")
position, page, totalFound	Rank on 1688, results page, and the match count 1688 reports
details	Optional product page data: price tiers, stock, specifications, photos, video, ship-from city, unit weight

How to search 1688 by image

1. Put your product photo URLs into Product photo URLs, one per line.
2. Choose Max matches per photo: 60 is the default and 600 the ceiling.
3. If you need quantity price tiers, stock and specifications for the top matches, turn on Open product pages.
4. Press Start. Expect roughly 10 to 20 seconds per photo for the first 60 matches; five photos run side by side by default.
5. Export the dataset to JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull it through the Apify API.

How much does it cost?

Event	Price
Image search (a photo with at least one organic match)	$0.004
Matched product	$0.0004 ($0.40 per 1,000)
Product page (optional)	$0.003
Actor start	$0.00005

Examples: 1 photo with 60 matches is $0.028; 100 photos with 20 matches each are $1.20. Residential proxy traffic is part of the price. Sponsored rows, duplicates, photos without a match and failed photos are free. Free plan: Apify's $5 of monthly credit pays for roughly 175 photos at 60 matches each.

Input

{
    "imageUrls": [
        "https://cbu01.alicdn.com/img/ibank/O1CN01nQ841G2GNtAvVu4sV_!!2216498669004-0-cib.jpg",
        "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Stainless_steel_water_bottle.jpg"
    ],
    "maxResultsPerImage": 60,
    "includeAds": false,
    "includeProductDetails": false
}

Accepted formats: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and AVIF. Size limit: 10 MB and 50 megapixels per file. The Actor shrinks every file to 500 px before it goes to 1688. One run takes up to 1,000 photos.

Output

One row per match. Export the dataset to JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

{
    "inputImage": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Stainless_steel_water_bottle.jpg",
    "offerId": "978730088039",
    "title": "马卡龙色弹跳盖保温杯304不锈钢便携水杯学生户外随手杯礼品定制",
    "price": 21,
    "currency": "CNY",
    "minOrderQuantity": 1,
    "salesText": "400+件",
    "soldCount": 493,
    "bookedCount": 141,
    "matchScore": 0.74374,
    "supplierLoginId": "永康市沃胜工贸",
    "memberId": "b2b-22150854696560a16e",
    "companyName": "永康市沃胜工贸有限公司",
    "shopUrl": "https://664379010.1688.com",
    "businessType": "manufacturer",
    "businessTypeCn": "生产加工",
    "supplierProvince": "浙江",
    "supplierCity": "金华市",
    "yearsOnPlatform": 4,
    "factoryInspection": false,
    "businessInspection": false,
    "superFactory": false,
    "repurchaseRate": "65%",
    "tradeServiceScores": { "overall": 4.5 },
    "serviceTags": ["先采后付", "7天无理由"],
    "imageUrl": "https://cbu01.alicdn.com/O1CN01G990iK2LCVVCfIzP7_!!2215085469656-0-cib.jpg",
    "isAd": false,
    "offerUrl": "https://detail.1688.com/offer/978730088039.html",
    "position": 2,
    "page": 1,
    "totalFound": 700,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-11-10T00:33:04.787Z"
}

When a photo cannot be searched, the dataset gets a single free row holding inputImage and error.

Tips

• A product shot alone against a plain backdrop gives the tightest matches. With a lifestyle photo, 1688 tends to match the scene.
• 1688 decides on its own which item in the frame to match. When it locks onto the wrong one, crop tighter and run again.
• Rows arrive in 1688's rank order (position). Filter on businessType: "manufacturer" and factoryInspection to bring factories to the front.
• price is the entry price in yuan from the listing card. Turn on Open product pages for the full quantity tiers.
• Cap your spend with the run option Maximum cost per run. The Actor stops at the cap and bills nothing past it.

FAQ

Is a 1688 login required?

No login, cookie or phone verification. 1688 lets logged-out visitors search by picture, and the Actor works the same way.

Which photos work best?

Catalog photos from Amazon, Shopify, Temu, AliExpress, Alibaba or 1688 itself. Portraits, text-heavy screenshots and SVG files give poor or no matches.

Why did a photo return an error row?

Four causes cover nearly all cases: the URL did not serve an image, the file was over 10 MB, 1688 rejected the picture, or 1688 blocked the search on four fresh connections in a row. Error rows are free, so sending the photo again costs nothing.

Are the titles translated?

Not yet. Titles, company names and specifications come back in Chinese, as written on 1688.

What happens when a run is interrupted?

The Actor saves its progress after every page of matches. After a restart by Apify, or when you resurrect a run that timed out or was aborted, it skips finished photos and the matches it already delivered instead of charging them again.

Can I use this data legally?

The rows are business listings that 1688 displays to visitors without an account, and the Actor gathers no personal data. Whether your use is allowed depends on 1688's terms and on the law where you operate, so check both.