Indigo Books Scraper: Chapters & Coles Prices, ISBNs and Stock

This actor scrapes indigo.ca, the online store of Canada's largest bookstore chain (Indigo, Chapters and Coles). You can look up books, eBooks, audiobooks and gifts by keyword, ISBN, bestseller list or link. Each result is a clean row with:

• the current price, the list price and the discount
• ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 for every format
• authors, publisher and series
• online stock and, optionally, live stock at each of about 160 stores, with quantities and pickup times
• the star rating, the review breakdown and the latest reviews

You don't need an Indigo account, API key or browser.

What you can scrape

Input	What you get
Search terms (atomic habits, stephen king, dune)	Every matching product, in the website's order or sorted by price, newest, release date or rating
ISBNs / barcodes (ISBN-13, ISBN-10 or UPC)	That exact edition, with price and stock. Useful for checking a list of books against Indigo
Collections & bestseller lists (new-york-times-bestsellers, globe-and-mail-bestsellers, heathers-picks, canadian-authors, most-anticipated-books, new-this-week-books, kids-books, kobo-sale…)	The whole list, in rank order
indigo.ca links (product, collection or search pages)	The same data as the page shows. Old-style links from the previous site (…/en-ca/books/…/9780735211292-item.html) work too: the ISBN in the link is looked up

Filters

• Department (books, kids' books, eBooks, gifts, toys, lifestyle)
• Format (hardcover, paperback, Kobo eBook, audiobook, board book…)
• Language
• Price range and minimum star rating
• Labels such as Heather's Pick, Staff Pick, Canadian, New York Times Bestseller or Signed Edition
• Only products on sale, or only products available online

Use cases

• Book arbitrage and FBA scouting. Price a list of ISBNs at Indigo and compare them with Amazon.ca. Find discounted titles and see which store has copies on the shelf.
• Publishers, authors and agents. Track the price, discount, promotions and bestseller-list placement of your titles in Canada.
• Price comparison and deal sites. Get daily prices and list prices for the whole range of a search or category.
• Retail and market research. Track new releases, pre-orders, format mix, series and Canadian-author titles.
• Store availability. Find which Indigo, Chapters or Coles stores in a city or postal area have a title in stock, and how many copies.

Input examples

A keyword search with ratings and reviews:

{
  "searchTerms": ["atomic habits", "project hail mary"],
  "maxItemsPerQuery": 50,
  "includeReviews": true,
  "maxReviews": 5
}

A price check on a list of ISBNs, with Toronto store stock and one row per ISBN even when Indigo doesn't carry the book:

{
  "isbns": ["9780735211292", "0-593-13520-5", "9780593135204"],
  "includeStoreStock": true,
  "storeFilter": ["Toronto"],
  "includeNotFound": true
}

Bestseller lists, hardcovers only:

{
  "collections": ["new-york-times-bestsellers", "globe-and-mail-bestsellers"],
  "formats": ["Hardcover"],
  "maxItemsPerQuery": 500
}

Sale items in a department, cheapest first:

{
  "category": "kids-books",
  "onSaleOnly": true,
  "sortBy": "price_asc",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Output

By default each product gives one row. The row shows the format the website lists first, and the other formats are listed in otherFormats. Turn on One row per format to give each hardcover, paperback, eBook or audiobook its own row, with its own ISBN, price and stock.

{
  "title": "Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones",
  "authors": ["James Clear"],
  "format": "Hardcover",
  "isbn13": "9780735211292",
  "isbn10": "0735211299",
  "price": 27,
  "compareAtPrice": 36,
  "discountPct": 25,
  "onSale": true,
  "currency": "CAD",
  "promotions": ["Promo - Up to 25% off Bestsellers"],
  "availability": "in_stock",
  "onlineQtyAvailable": 3355,
  "storesInStockCount": 154,
  "stores": [
    { "store": "Toronto Eaton Centre", "city": "Toronto", "provinceCode": "ON", "postalCode": "M5B 2H1",
      "address": "220 Yonge Street", "phone": "(416) 591-3622", "available": true, "quantity": 48,
      "pickUpTime": "Usually ready in 24 hours" }
  ],
  "rating": 4.81,
  "reviewCount": 569,
  "starDistribution": { "1": 3, "2": 1, "3": 10, "4": 75, "5": 480 },
  "readerRatings": { "Reading Pace": 3, "Resonance": 2 },
  "reviews": [
    { "rating": 5, "title": "Evidenced-based book", "text": "Better than most self help books…",
      "date": "2025-11-30", "verifiedBuyer": true, "country": "CA" }
  ],
  "publisher": "Penguin Publishing Group",
  "imprint": "Avery",
  "language": "English",
  "pageCount": 320,
  "releaseDate": "2018-10-16",
  "featured": ["Heather's Pick", "Staff Pick"],
  "genre": "Self-Help General",
  "collections": ["Trending on BookTok", "Indigo Non-Fiction Bestsellers", "Workplace Culture"],
  "imageUrl": "https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0655/8980/5233/files/1_d8dc….jpg",
  "url": "https://www.indigo.ca/products/atomic-habits",
  "otherFormats": [
    { "format": "Audiobook", "isbn13": "9780593207093", "price": 19.99, "availability": "out_of_stock" },
    { "format": "Kobo eBook", "isbn13": "9780735211308", "price": 16.99, "availability": "digital" }
  ],
  "source": { "type": "isbn", "input": "9780735211292" },
  "rank": 1,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T02:57:23.266Z"
}

Each row also includes:

• upc, sku, inventoryPolicy, storesWithStockCount
• seriesName, seriesId, seriesPosition
• illustrators, translators, editors, contributorIds
• productType, brand, colour, subject, collectionIds, browseCategoryIds
• adultOnly, largePrint, returnable
• handle, productId, variantId, listedAt, description, formatsCount

The Overview and Stock tabs of the dataset show the most useful columns. The CSV export leaves out the nested lists.

The availability field

Value	Meaning
in_stock	Ships now; onlineQtyAvailable units are available online
preorder	Not released yet; orders are being taken
backorder	Released but out of stock; orders are still being taken
out_of_stock	Can't be ordered online right now (it may still be in stores; turn on per-store stock)
digital	A Kobo eBook or audiobook, delivered digitally

Tips

• Past 10,000 results. Indigo shows at most 10,000 results for any one search or collection. If you set Max results per search above 10,000, the actor splits the search into price bands, then by format and language. Each band stays under the limit, and duplicates are removed. Crawling the entire catalogue (about 8 million products) is out of scope. Split a large department with the filters instead.
• Broad words like "romance" or "cookbooks" open a curated collection on indigo.ca instead of search results. The actor does the same, and the row's source.redirectedTo shows which collection it used. Turn off Follow category redirects to get plain keyword matches instead.
• Collection names are the last part of a collection link: indigo.ca/collections/heathers-picks → heathers-picks. Every row's collectionIds also lists the collections a product belongs to, so you can use those as inputs.
• On sale only / Available online only are checked product by product, so on a broad search the actor reads through the whole result list (up to 10,000 per search) to find the matches. That is slower. Narrow the search, pick a collection like kobo-sale, or add a price or format filter.
• Spending limit. If you set a maximum cost for the run, the actor stops just before it, and every row it returns is covered.
• Speed. One request returns up to 200 products. Searches and lists run at thousands of products per minute. Per-store stock and reviews add one small request per product.

FAQ

Do I need an Indigo account or cookies? No. The actor reads the same public data the website shows to any visitor.

Which proxy should I use? Apify's datacenter proxy, which is the default. If the store ever starts refusing datacenter traffic, the actor switches to Canadian residential proxies on its own.

Are the prices and stock live? Yes. Prices, online stock and the in-store count come from the live catalogue at the time of the run. With Per-store stock on, the online quantity and each store's quantity are also read live from the store.

Does it include Chapters and Coles? Yes. They share one catalogue and one store network with Indigo. Per-store stock covers every store location listed on indigo.ca (about 160). Distribution centres are left out.

French books? eBooks? Gifts? Yes to all three. French and other languages can be filtered. Kobo eBooks are listed with availability: "digital". Gifts, toys and stationery come with their brand, colour or scent and a UPC.

What happens when an ISBN isn't sold at Indigo? By default it is skipped and listed in the run's status message. Turn on Rows for codes Indigo doesn't carry to get one found: false row for each missing code.

Are reviewer names included? No. Reviews include the rating, title, text, date, verified-buyer flag and country, but not the reviewer's identity.

Is it legal to scrape indigo.ca? This Actor only collects publicly available data: product listings, prices, stock levels, store locations, ratings and reviews that anyone can see on indigo.ca without an account. Collecting publicly available data is generally legal, but you're responsible for how you use it. Results include the names of authors and other contributors as credited on each product, and that counts as personal data. You must follow privacy laws such as GDPR, PIPEDA and CCPA, as well as Indigo's terms. If you're unsure, check with a lawyer. More on this: Is web scraping legal?

Does it access any private data? No. Everything comes from what indigo.ca shows to any visitor without logging in. It never uses a login, never touches private or restricted accounts, and never reaches password-protected areas.