🛍️ Taobao & Tmall Search & Product Catalog Scraper (淘宝 & 天猫)

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💡 Cost-Effective Pay-Per-Event (PPE) Pricing

[!TIP]

Transparent Pricing with No Hidden Compute Surcharges

• Zero Hidden Browser Fees: Avoid expensive scrapers that charge high rates per 1,000 items while requiring heavy 1GB–2GB RAM configurations that drain your platform compute credits.
• Lightweight & High-Speed: Runs efficiently on the minimal 256MB RAM tier with instant startup and high-speed data delivery at ~29 items/second.
• Unmatched Value on Apify: Extract catalog products from $1.05 to $1.50 per 1,000 items.
• 100% Risk-Free Free Trial: With Apify's default $5.00 free monthly credit, you can extract over 3,330+ search catalog products completely free every month before spending a cent.

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📖 Overview

Taobao (淘宝网) and Tmall (天猫) represent the largest consumer e-commerce ecosystem in the world, with over 1 billion active product listings establishing global consumer market trends across apparel, consumer electronics, beauty, accessories, toys, and smart home appliances.

Historically, extracting catalog search data from Taobao and Tmall has been an operational nightmare:

• Mandatory Login & SMS Barriers: Visiting desktop Taobao item pages directly triggers forced QR code redirects and Chinese phone number verification walls.
• Broken Media Links: Ephemeral CDN signatures and image resizing modifiers (_400x400.jpg, _Q75.jpg_.webp) lead to HTTP 403 Forbidden errors when imported into Shopify, Excel, or Google Sheets.
• Overseas Mirror Incompleteness: Scrapers hitting world.taobao.com miss over 60% of domestic Chinese catalog listings and localized prices.
• Heavy Browser Crashes: Puppeteer and Playwright scrapers requiring 1GB–4GB RAM frequently crash with Out-Of-Memory (OOM Exit 137) errors on large pagination runs.

Taobao & Tmall Search Scraper by UnitBytes eliminates every barrier:

• 100% Cookieless Operation: Search millions of products without configuring custom cookies, tokens, or Chinese accounts.
• Ultra-Fast Streaming: Delivers catalog products in batches of up to 60 products per page at ~29 items/second.
• Permanent Full-Res HD Image Links: All photo URLs are automatically rewritten to permanent master-resolution assets on img.alicdn.com that never expire.
• Strict Cost & Billing Protection: Runs on the 256MB RAM tier. Startup fee is nominal ($0.00005). If a search returns 0 products or is blocked by target rate limits, you are charged $0.00.

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⚡ UnitBytes · Chinese E-Commerce & Sourcing Ecosystem

⚡ UnitBytes · China Sourcing & E-Commerce Intelligence Ecosystem
🛍️ Taobao & Tmall 📍 You are here Search, Prices, Sales & Shops	🇨🇳 1688 Factory Direct Wholesale B2B & MOQ Direct factories & FBA specs	🌐 Alibaba Wholesale Global B2B Suppliers Verified audits & OEM/ODM	🐟 Goofish Xianyu C2C Resale & Samples Liquidation & arbitrage	📕 Xiaohongshu Trends Social Commerce & KOL Viral products & buyer intent

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🥊 How It Compares to Other Scraping Approaches

Feature / Capability	⭐ UnitBytes Scraper	⚠️ Standard Market Scrapers	⚠️ Heavy Browser Scrapers
Zero Account / Zero Cookies	✅ 100% Cookieless	❌ Often Requires Setup	❌ High Session Fragility
Permanent Full-Res HD Image Links	✅ YES (No Broken 403s)	❌ No (Raw Thumbnails)	❌ No (Expiring Links)
Price per 1,000 Products	🟢 $1.05 – $1.50	🔴 $5.00 – $15.00+	🔴 High Compute Costs
Startup Fee	$0.00 ($0.00005)	$0.01 – $0.05	Variable
Catalog Coverage	100% Domestic Mainland	⚠️ Often Restricted	⚠️ Prone to Blocks
Scraping Speed	⚡ ~29 items/second	⚠️ 2–5 items/second	⚠️ 1–3 items/second
Memory Allocation	Strictly 256 MB	512 MB – 1 GB	1 GB – 4 GB
Manual startPage Pagination	✅ Yes (e.g. Page 2, 5, 10)	❌ No	❌ No
Stateful Resumption (0 Duplicates)	✅ Yes (resumptionToken)	❌ No	❌ No
Dual Output Architecture	✅ Flat Table + Legacy JSON	⚠️ Flat only	⚠️ Flat only

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💰 Transparent Pricing Tiers & Apify Discounts

We operate on a transparent Pay-Per-Event (PPE) model. You only pay for what you extract, and we pass through all Apify subscription volume discounts automatically:

Apify Plan Tier	Monthly Apify Fee	Apify PPE Discount	Search Catalog Mode (per 1,000 items)	What $5.00 Free Monthly Credit Gets You	Ideal Use Case
Free Plan	$0 / mo	Base Rate	$1.50 ($0.0015 / item)	3,330 Product Listings	Testing queries, sample extractions & ad-hoc market research
Starter Plan	$49 / mo	10% OFF	$1.35 ($0.00135 / item)	High-volume dropshipping & price tracking	E-commerce stores, price monitoring & catalog enrichment
Scale Plan	$499 / mo	20% OFF	$1.20 ($0.00120 / item)	Large-scale retail catalog intelligence	Market aggregators, competitor benchmark tracking & ERP sync
Business Plan	$999+ / mo	30% OFF	$1.05 ($0.00105 / item)	Enterprise data pipelines & LLM training	High-frequency catalog crawlers, AI models & data lakes

• Billing Protection: Startup fee is nominal ($0.00005). If a search returns 0 products or is blocked by target rate limits, you are charged $0.00.

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✨ Key Features & Extracted Data Fields

• 🔍 Multi-Query Batch Search: Pass multiple search keywords (e.g. ["phone case", "蓝牙耳机", "smart watch"]) in a single run with 0 cookies required.
• 💰 True Prices & Promotional Discounts: Extracts current selling price, original price, and currency (CNY).
• 📈 Sales Volume & Buyer Signals: Extracts real sales numbers (e.g. 1000+人付款, 月销500+).
• 🏪 Verified Shop & Seller Scorecards: Includes shop name, seller nickname, location (e.g. 广东 广州), seller credit rating, and direct shop URL.
• 🖼️ 100% Working Permanent HD Photos: Thumbnail modifiers (_400x400, _Q75.jpg_.webp) and expiring authentication query strings are stripped automatically. Product photo URLs link to master high-resolution assets on img.alicdn.com.
• 🔢 Deep Pagination Scaling: Powered by standard 60-item batch streaming—crawl hundreds or thousands of products consecutively with 0 duplicates.
• 🚀 Manual Page Jumps (startPage): Start directly from page 2, 5, or 10 without needing cookies or resumption tokens.
• 🔄 Multi-Batch Resumption: Emits an encrypted resumptionToken for automated batching pipelines, webhooks, and scheduled incremental crawls.
• 📊 Dual Output Modes: Choose flat (clean unnested columns ready for Excel, CSV, Google Sheets, Pandas, and BI dashboards) or legacy (nested raw JSON envelope).

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📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
queries	Array	["phone case"]	List of search keywords in English or Chinese (e.g. ["phone case", "女装", "蓝牙耳机"]). Scrapes multiple keywords in 1 run with 0 cookies required.
keyword	String	None	Single keyword in English or Chinese. Combined with queries if provided.
startUrls	Array	[]	Search listing or category URLs pasted from your browser. Keywords will be extracted automatically.
maxItems	Integer	30	Maximum number of products to scrape (1 to 10,000).
startPage	Integer	1	Page number to start scraping from (e.g. 1, 2, 5). Allows paginating through large catalogs without tokens.
sortBy	String	default	Sort order: default (Relevance), sales (Volume), price_asc (Low to High), price_desc (High to Low).
priceMin	Integer	None	Minimum unit price filter in Chinese Yuan (¥ CNY).
priceMax	Integer	None	Maximum unit price filter in Chinese Yuan (¥ CNY).
outputFormat	String	flat	flat (Clean unnested columns for Excel/CSV/AI) or legacy (Nested JSON envelope).

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📤 Sample Output Preview (flat format)

{
  "itemId": "1069831484297",
  "title": "适用于iPhone16手机壳新款苹果15ProMax防摔高级感磁吸保护套",
  "platform": "taobao",
  "url": "https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=1069831484297",
  "price": 15.00,
  "originalPrice": 29.90,
  "currency": "CNY",
  "salesCount": "5000+人付款",
  "reviewCount": 850,
  "shopName": "数码优品数码专营店",
  "sellerNick": "digital_master",
  "shopUrl": "https://shop123456.taobao.com",
  "location": "广东 深圳",
  "mainImage": "https://img.alicdn.com/imgextra/i1/123456/O1CN01example.jpg",
  "images": [
    "https://img.alicdn.com/imgextra/i1/123456/O1CN01example1.jpg",
    "https://img.alicdn.com/imgextra/i2/123456/O1CN01example2.jpg"
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-07T19:30:00.000Z",
  "searchQuery": "phone case",
  "detailLevel": "full"
}

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🛠️ How to Use via API

🐍 Python Integration

from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize client with your Apify API Token
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

# Run the actor
run = client.actor("unitbytes/taobao-tmall-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "queries": ["phone case", "wireless earbuds"],
        "maxItems": 100,
        "sortBy": "sales",
        "outputFormat": "flat"
    }
)

# Fetch results from dataset
dataset_items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(f"Scraped {len(dataset_items)} products.")
for item in dataset_items[:3]:
    print(f"- {item['title']} (¥{item['price']}) | Sales: {item.get('salesCount')} | Shop: {item.get('shopName')}")

🟨 Node.js Integration

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('unitbytes/taobao-tmall-scraper').call({
    queries: ['phone case'],
    maxItems: 50,
    sortBy: 'sales',
    outputFormat: 'flat',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Scraped ${items.length} products.`);

🔌 MCP Server Setup: Claude Code, Cursor & AI Agents

Connect this scraper directly to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI agent via the hosted Apify MCP server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,unitbytes/taobao-tmall-scraper"
    }
  }
}

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Do I need a Taobao account, Alipay, or a Chinese phone number?

No. The actor operates 100% cookieless. You do not need to register an account, provide session cookies, or verify an SMS code.

Can I search using English keywords?

Yes. Standard English terms (e.g. phone case, bluetooth earbuds, yoga pants, smart watch) are fully supported. For maximum catalog breadth, you can also search with native Chinese product terms (e.g. 手机壳, 蓝牙耳机, 女装).

Can I paginate using startPage without tokens or cookies?

Yes, 100%. You can simply set "startPage": 2 or "startPage": 5 in your input. The scraper starts directly from that page without requiring any cookies or encrypted tokens.

What is the purpose of resumptionToken?

The resumptionToken is an automated, stateful checkpoint saved to your run's Key-Value Store. While human users prefer startPage, automated workflows and webhooks can pass resumptionToken to resume multi-batch crawls with guaranteed zero duplicate items across runs.

Are the product image links permanent?

Yes. Raw thumbnail parameters (_400x400.jpg, _Q75.jpg_.webp) and expiring authentication tokens are automatically stripped, rewriting images to permanent master resolution CDN links on img.alicdn.com.

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📞 Support & Custom Sourcing Pipelines

Need high-volume enterprise crawls, custom ERP feeds, or dedicated SLAs?

• Apify Actor: Taobao & Tmall Search & Product Catalog Scraper
• Author: UnitBytes
• Email: contact@unitbytes.com
• Enterprise Platform: https://unitbytes.com

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🔍 Keywords & Search Tags

taobao-scraper • tmall-scraper • taobao-search-scraper • tmall-search-scraper • taobao-api • tmall-api • taobao-product-scraper • tmall-product-scraper • taobao-pricing-api • scrape-taobao • scrape-tmall • taobao-dropshipping • taobao爬虫 • 天猫爬虫 • 淘宝数据采集 • 天猫数据采集 • taobao-seller-scraper • china-ecommerce-scraper • apify-actor • pay-per-event