Alibaba.com Rental Scraper

Alibaba.com Rental Scraper

This Apify Actor is a conditional strict rental extractor. It extracts rich, source-backed rental listing data from permitted public Alibaba.com pages only when the source publishes rental evidence.

Current qualification status

The current public route https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html is readable, but its embedded offers are sale listings with prices and MOQ. The fresh direct check emitted zero normal rows and one NO_RENTAL_MATCHES diagnostic; the fresh account-enabled proxy check stopped at robots preflight with zero normal rows and one ROBOTS_UNAVAILABLE diagnostic. Neither path exposed source-backed rental period, rental rate, or availability. Sale listings do not qualify as rental inventory; this Actor is therefore not publishable as current rental inventory.

Qualification requires a public target-owned rental page or an authorized Alibaba API/licensed rental feed that exposes, for each accepted listing, a rental period, rate, and availability. The Actor does not log in, use private cookies, solve CAPTCHAs, bypass robots/WAF controls, or infer rental facts from sale listings.

Actor page: parseforge/alibaba-com-rental-scraper

The Actor reads public HTML, visible product cards, and published Schema.org Product JSON-LD. It supports multiple start URLs, per-source pagination, global deduplication, filters, sorting, optional product-detail enrichment, standard Apify Proxy routing, and deterministic local fixtures.

Why use this Actor

Use it for public supplier discovery, rental-market reconnaissance, equipment comparison, preliminary price/MOQ research, and bounded catalog monitoring. The rental-only mode is intentionally conservative: it requires a rental keyword, a rental-service cue, and published period, rate, and availability facts, so a normal sale listing is not presented as a rental offer.

What the Actor returns

Product rows are marketplace-focused and contain observed fields only. Actor debugging wrappers such as recordId, recordType, status, success, fieldCoverage, dataQuality, extractionMethod, httpStatus, accessStatus, usedProxy, and observedAt are not written to the dataset. Request counts, retries, blocked-source evidence, and enrichment counts are stored in the OUTPUT_SUMMARY and DIAGNOSTICS key-value records.

When available, product rows include:

• identity: url, listingUrl, productId, title, description, category, brand, sku, mpn
• source context: source, sourceDomain, sourceUrl, pageNum, position, keyword, scrapedAt
• pricing: price, priceMin, priceMax, currency, priceText, priceFormatted, availability
• supplier and engagement: supplierName, supplierUrl, supplierProfileUrl, supplierCountry, supplierYears, rating, reviewCount, soldCount, transactionCount
• order and merchandising: minimumOrderQuantity, minimumOrderUnit, minimumOrderText, badges, isSponsored, hasTradeAssurance, leadTime, shipping
• rental and product facts: rentalMatch, rentalSignals, rentalEvidence, rentalPeriod, rentalPrice, rentalPriceMin, rentalPriceMax, rentalPriceCurrency, rentalPriceText, rentalAvailability, attributes
• media: images, imageUrls, thumbnail, imageCount, and optional detailUrl/detailEnriched

Missing values are omitted instead of fabricated. When images are enabled, images and imageUrls are aligned, thumbnail is their first entry, and imageCount is their length. Image URLs are restricted to product-scoped Alibaba CDN assets; known logos, icons, avatars, placeholders, and “find similar” assets are discarded.

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Source and access policy

Supported public paths are /trade/search, /catalog/, /category/, /countrysearch/, /wholesale/, /showroom/, and /product-detail/ on HTTPS Alibaba hosts. The default keyword route is the currently useful public /countrysearch/CN/<keyword>.html path, whose embedded public offer payload is parsed when present. The Actor fetches https://www.alibaba.com/robots.txt before source requests and skips URLs disallowed by the published policy. It never logs in, calls private APIs, accesses seller contact endpoints, solves CAPTCHAs, or bypasses WAF/access controls.

rentalOnly: true is deliberately stricter than a keyword search. A product must contain a configured rental keyword, a published rental-service cue, and all three source-backed rental facts together: a rental period (per day, hourly, or similar), a rental rate/price, and rental availability or booking status. Generic sales language such as rental equipment, for rental business, an MOQ, or a product title containing rental alone is rejected. When accepted, rentalEvidence contains rental_service, rental_period, rental_price, and rental_availability, and the corresponding period, rental price, and availability fields are populated.

Explicit legacy /trade/search URLs remain accepted for compatibility, but Alibaba may disallow /trade/ in robots.txt. For live rental-category extraction, provide a currently permitted public category URL such as https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html. A blocked, unavailable, challenged, or empty source produces a minimal diagnostic only when includeDiagnostics is enabled:

{
  "url": "https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html",
  "error": "Alibaba returned a public anti-automation challenge page.",
  "errorCode": "ACCESS_BOUNDARY",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-08T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Input

All examples below are valid JSON. startUrls and productUrls may also contain Apify-style objects with a url property; invalid or unsupported URLs are ignored and counted as rejectedInputCount in OUTPUT_SUMMARY.

Basic extraction

If startUrls is empty or omitted, keyword builds a public country-search URL such as https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html.

{
  "keyword": "equipment rental",
  "maxItems": 25,
  "maxPages": 3,
  "rentalOnly": true,
  "includeImages": true
}

Multiple sources and pagination

Every start URL is processed independently. Pages within one source are followed sequentially through observed numbered or “next” links. maxItems is global across all sources and pages. maxPages is per source; 0 means automatic pagination with a hard 100-page safety cap.

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html",
    "https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/party-rental-equipment.html"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "maxPages": 5,
  "deduplicate": true,
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "includeDiagnostics": true
}

Filters and sorting

Filters use observed values. If a numeric filter is active and the page does not expose that value, the record does not pass the filter. requiredBadges requires every requested badge, case-insensitively. Sorting happens after filtering across all sources; relevance preserves source/page/card order, and missing numeric values sort after observed values.

{
  "keyword": "generator rental",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "sortBy": "rating_desc",
  "textQuery": "portable",
  "category": "equipment",
  "minPrice": 50,
  "maxPrice": 5000,
  "minRating": 4.5,
  "minReviewCount": 20,
  "minSoldCount": 10,
  "minSupplierYears": 3,
  "minOrderQuantity": 1,
  "maxOrderQuantity": 100,
  "supplierCountry": "CN",
  "requiredBadges": ["CE"]
}

Supported sortBy values are relevance, price_asc, price_desc, rating_desc, reviews_desc, sold_desc, supplier_years_desc, moq_asc, and title_asc.

Direct products and optional detail enrichment

productUrls accepts public product-detail URLs. enrichDetails additionally follows product links discovered on permitted source pages. Detail requests are bounded by maxDetailPages, share the same request pacing/retry policy, and do not bypass robots or access boundaries.

{
  "productUrls": [
    "https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Portable-Generator-Rental_1600123456789.html"
  ],
  "rentalOnly": false,
  "enrichDetails": false,
  "maxDetailPages": 0,
  "includeImages": false,
  "includeAttributes": false
}

Developer options and proxy

These controls are grouped as Developer options in the Apify input UI. requestDelayMs paces request starts, maxConcurrency bounds concurrent source/detail operations, maxRequestRetries retries transient failures with backoff, and requestTimeoutSecs sets the per-response limit. The legacy timeoutMs field is accepted for older saved inputs but new inputs should use requestTimeoutSecs.

{
  "requestDelayMs": 1200,
  "maxConcurrency": 2,
  "maxRequestRetries": 3,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 60,
  "maxResponseBytes": 20000000,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Apify Proxy changes only the network route. It is optional, is not used in fixture mode, and does not authorize bypassing Alibaba's robots policy or access controls.

Complete input reference

The canonical input fields are keyword, textQuery, category, startUrls, productUrls, maxItems, maxPages, sortBy, deduplicate, includeImages, includeAttributes, includeDiagnostics, rentalOnly, rentalKeywords, minPrice, maxPrice, minRating, minReviewCount, minSoldCount, minSupplierYears, minOrderQuantity, maxOrderQuantity, supplierCountry, requiredBadges, enrichDetails, maxDetailPages, requestDelayMs, maxConcurrency, maxRequestRetries, requestTimeoutSecs, maxResponseBytes, proxyConfiguration, fixtureFile, and fixtureFiles.

maxItems is global (1–500), maxPages and maxDetailPages are bounded per-source/detail limits (0–100), requestDelayMs is 0–10,000 ms, maxConcurrency is 1–5, maxRequestRetries is 0–5, requestTimeoutSecs is 10–180, and maxResponseBytes is 100,000–30,000,000. timeoutMs is a supported legacy alias for requestTimeoutSecs. Invalid source URLs are ignored and counted in rejectedInputCount; unsupported input keys and unsafe fixture paths fail validation.

Deterministic fixture examples

Use one fixture for parser QA:

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html"
  ],
  "maxItems": 1,
  "maxPages": 1,
  "requestDelayMs": 0,
  "maxConcurrency": 1,
  "maxRequestRetries": 0,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 15,
  "fixtureFile": "fixtures/sample.html"
}

Use ordered fixtures to test pagination and multiple records. The first file is page 1, the second is page 2, and so on:

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html"
  ],
  "maxItems": 10,
  "maxPages": 2,
  "sortBy": "price_asc",
  "fixtureFiles": ["fixtures/sample.html", "fixtures/sample-page-2.html"]
}

fixtureFile and fixtureFiles are mutually exclusive and must be Actor-relative HTML paths.

Output example

Example product row:

{
  "url": "https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Portable-Generator-Rental_1600123456789.html",
  "listingUrl": "https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Portable-Generator-Rental_1600123456789.html",
  "productId": "1600123456789",
  "title": "Portable Generator Rental",
  "description": "Portable generator rental for events and construction.",
  "category": "Equipment Rental",
  "brand": "PowerHarbor",
  "sku": "1600123456789",
  "source": "Alibaba.com public rental listings",
  "sourceDomain": "www.alibaba.com",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/equipment-rental.html",
  "pageNum": 1,
  "position": 1,
  "keyword": "rental",
  "price": 120,
  "priceMin": 120,
  "priceMax": 120,
  "currency": "USD",
  "priceText": "120.00",
  "priceFormatted": "120.00",
  "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
  "rentalEvidence": [
    "rental_service",
    "rental_period",
    "rental_price",
    "rental_availability"
  ],
  "rentalPeriod": "day",
  "rentalPrice": 120,
  "rentalPriceMin": 120,
  "rentalPriceMax": 120,
  "rentalPriceCurrency": "USD",
  "rentalPriceText": "$120 per day",
  "rentalAvailability": "Available for rent by day",
  "supplierName": "PowerHarbor Equipment Co.",
  "rating": 4.8,
  "reviewCount": 12,
  "rentalMatch": true,
  "rentalSignals": ["rental"],
  "images": ["https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/portable-generator.jpg"],
  "imageUrls": ["https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/portable-generator.jpg"],
  "thumbnail": "https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/portable-generator.jpg",
  "imageCount": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-06T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Operational information is kept outside product rows:

{
  "status": "SUCCEEDED",
  "requests": 2,
  "retries": 0,
  "successfulRequests": 2,
  "failedRequests": 0,
  "sourcesProcessed": 1,
  "pagesProcessed": 2,
  "recordsEmitted": 2,
  "diagnostics": 0,
  "completedAt": "2026-09-06T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Dataset and key-value outputs

The default dataset contains product rows and, when enabled, minimal diagnostic rows. The default key-value store contains:

• OUTPUT_SUMMARY: counts, status, input limits, pagination totals, retry totals, and completion time
• SOURCE_METADATA: source URL, supported paths, robots URL, and public-source policy
• DIAGNOSTICS: { "count": number, "items": [{ "url": string, "error": string, "errorCode": string, "scrapedAt": string }] }
• OUTPUT: the same run summary for compatibility with existing integrations

Run it in Apify Console

1. Open the Actor and select the Input tab.
2. Paste a canonical JSON input, such as the basic extraction example, or fill the input form.
3. Select Save & Run (or Start) and wait for the run to finish.
4. Open Dataset to inspect rental rows and any emitted diagnostics.
5. Open Key-value store and inspect OUTPUT_SUMMARY, SOURCE_METADATA, and DIAGNOSTICS.
6. Use the Dataset export controls to download JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Troubleshooting, API, and Issues

• ROBOTS_DISALLOWS_URL and ROBOTS_DISALLOWS_DETAIL mean the published Alibaba robots policy prevented the request; the Actor does not bypass it.
• ACCESS_BOUNDARY, HTTP_401, HTTP_403, HTTP_429, HTTP_451, and REDIRECT_OFF_HOST indicate an access or redirect boundary. Inspect the corresponding item in DIAGNOSTICS and the counts in OUTPUT_SUMMARY.
• NO_RENTAL_MATCHES means the permitted page was readable but no record met the configured rental evidence rule. Alibaba country-search results often expose sale prices and MOQ for products whose titles contain “rental”; those rows are intentionally rejected unless the same offer publishes rental service plus period, rate, and availability evidence. Set rentalOnly to false only when ordinary product rows are intended.
• NO_PRODUCT_RECORDS means the permitted response did not expose supported Product JSON-LD or visible product-card evidence.
• Try a currently permitted category URL, a smaller maxPages, a respectful requestDelayMs, or standard Apify Proxy routing. Proxy routing can change availability but is not an access-control bypass.
• Use the Actor API tab for the run endpoint and schemas. The Dataset API exposes rows; the key-value-store API exposes OUTPUT_SUMMARY, SOURCE_METADATA, and DIAGNOSTICS.
• Report reproducible problems in the Actor Issues tab with the run ID, sanitized input, source URL, and errorCode; never include credentials or private tokens.

Run and validate locally

From this Actor directory:

npm ci
npm test
apify validate-schema
apify run --purge --input-file .actor/input.json
npm run validate

The fixture inputs under test/inputs/ exercise filters, sorting, multiple sources, pagination, image/detail options, developer settings, and rental-semantic false-positive rejection without making network requests. The live category URL may be blocked or robots-disallowed; in that case the Actor records the source diagnostic and does not fabricate rows.

Cost and limits

Actor cost is driven primarily by request count, response size, and Apify platform compute/network usage. Use maxItems, maxPages, maxDetailPages, maxConcurrency, requestDelayMs, and maxResponseBytes to keep runs bounded. No supplier contact, checkout, account login, or paid Alibaba action is performed.

Privacy, legal, and non-affiliation

Use only public pages and information you are authorized to collect. Respect Alibaba's terms, robots policy, applicable privacy and data-protection laws, rate limits, and image or supplier rights. Do not use this Actor to collect private account data, bypass login or CAPTCHA controls, or make misleading commercial claims. This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with Alibaba.com or Alibaba Group; you are responsible for validating supplier information and for how exported data is used.

Support and legal

Use this Actor only with public pages and in accordance with Alibaba's terms, robots policy, applicable law, and your data-protection obligations. It is not affiliated with Alibaba.com. For support, include the Actor run ID, sanitized input, source URL, and the relevant errorCode; never include credentials or private tokens.