Alibaba Suppliers Scraper

Collect normalized supplier cards from Alibaba's public company-supplier search. Start from a product keyword or one or more public Alibaba search URLs, cap the result count, and receive deduplicated supplier records with explicit provenance.

What this Actor does

• Builds Alibaba's public keyword-specific supplier-directory URL and rejects unrelated cards, or preserves supplied Alibaba URLs without imposing an unrelated default filter.
• Parses supplier identity, company attributes, badges, response rate, and linked products.
• Normalizes URLs, removes placeholder values, and deduplicates by supplier identity.
• Reports blocked, failed, or no-result pages in OUTPUT_SUMMARY, never as paid dataset rows.
• Stops at Alibaba access-control pages without attempting a bypass.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keywords	string	stainless steel	Public supplier-search phrase; keyword and query are aliases.
searchUrl	string	—	One public Alibaba supplier-search URL.
urls	request list	—	Up to 20 Alibaba URLs; startUrls and url are aliases.
page	integer	1	Search page from 1 to 100 when the Actor builds the URL.
maxResults	integer	20	Supplier-record cap from 1 to 100; maxItems is an alias.
timeoutMs	integer	30000	Per-request timeout from 5,000 to 60,000 ms.
proxyConfiguration	object	Direct (useApifyProxy: false)	Optional standard Apify proxy configuration. A proxy does not bypass access controls.

Unknown fields, malformed URL entries, and non-Alibaba URLs fail before requests begin.

Example input

{
  "keywords": "stainless steel",
  "page": 1,
  "maxResults": 10,
  "timeoutMs": 30000,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Dataset output

Every dataset item is a supplier record with identity, company, marketplace, product, and provenance fields. Dataset rows never contain wrapper fields such as recordId or recordType.

{
  "supplierId": "sup-42",
  "supplierName": "Example Steel Co.",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.alibaba.com/company/example-steel",
  "country": "China",
  "yearsOnAlibaba": 8,
  "badges": ["Gold Supplier", "Trade Assurance"],
  "mainProducts": "Steel tubing",
  "responseRate": 96,
  "requestedUrl": "https://www.alibaba.com/stainless-steel-suppliers.html",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.alibaba.com/stainless-steel-suppliers.html",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-01-02T03:04:05.000Z"
}

The fixed OUTPUT_SUMMARY key contains run status, saved-item count, diagnostic count, duplicate count, failed pages, proxy state, bounded diagnostics, and completion time. Diagnostics are excluded from the dataset and success count.

Limits and cost control

The Actor makes one request per supplied search URL, processes URLs sequentially, uses no automatic retries, and stops when maxResults is reached. Keep URLs and result caps small for test runs. Usage may include compute and proxy traffic.

Public-data and responsible use

This Actor reads only public Alibaba search pages. It does not authenticate, alter browser identity, solve challenges, or bypass access controls. Page markup and availability can vary by locale and network. Supplier details may be business or personal data; follow Alibaba's terms and applicable privacy and sourcing requirements.

Local development

npm test
npm run lint
apify validate-schema
apify run --purge
npm run validate