The Amazon Product Data API

The Parazun Amazon real-time web scraping API makes scraping Amazon data straight from their website simple. Just make a request to the rest API endpoints and get a properly formatted JSON for the data you need.

Building an Amazon Data API Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Does Amazon have an API for their products?

Yes, Amazon offers their Amazon Product Advertising API (PAAPI) as a part of their Amazon Associates Program. This API allows users to search and retrieve up-to-date product details, price and availability data. The data and functionality they offer on the API is as follows:

Product Categories Graph
Images
Product Details
Product Offers
Product Variants
Search categories, indices and products.

You may be thinking, since Amazon offers an API, why not use that? I was initially using the the PAAPI because I just so happens had another project which was part of the Amazon Associates Program which allowed me to access the API. However, since the release of PAAPI version 5, access and usage of this API has drastically changed.

Limitations to Amazon’s Product Advertising API

Amazon offers their product advertising api (PAAPI) which provides programmatic access to their product data.

In order to access their API, you will need 2 things:

Firstly, you will need a project that can get approved to join the Amazon Associates Program to earn affiliate income on referred sales of Amazon products on a particular regional marketplace. When you activate your PAAPI credentials, you will be given access to the API with a request rate of 1 request per second and 8640 requests per day for 30 days.

The second thing you will need is referred sales. After 30 days, your usage limit is adjusted based upon shipped item revenue, to one transaction per day for every 5 cents of shipped item revenue or one transaction per second for every $4320 dollars of shipped item revenue.

If in a period of 30 days you don’t have any shipped item revenue, you lose access to the API.

As you can see, the PAAPI was not intented for general usage, but more to provide support to their Amazon Associate Program members for helping them generate more sales when they already have reoccurring sales.

Also as explicitly stated on the Amazon Associates Website, the data from the Product Advertising API cannot be used within mobile apps.

Details can be found in their documentation.

The Mission of the Parazun Amazon API

Our mission is to create a generally available Amazon Products API which can provide access to all of Amazon’s publicly available data on their worldwide marketplaces to everyone that needs it without having to jump through hoops to gain access. Our goal is also to provide better converage of the all the data available on Amazon that is not provided by their PAAPI.

The Challenges of Scraping Amazon Marketplaces

There are many challenges with scraping Amazon data due to the large amount of data they have, location sensitive data and the bot detection mechanisms they have in place.

Here are some of the things we do at Parazun in order to reliably retrieve publicly available data on the Amazon marketplaces.

Changing page layouts and formats

Amazon have many unique layouts for different product types and delivery formats. These layouts are regularly updated, so we have systems in place to monitor these changes and update our API accordingly.

Rotating proxies

Every request made from the API is done through rotating proxies of the corresponding regional marketplace the scraping request is made to. This is to ensure that we are using a fresh IP address to prevent blocks and to ensure that the price and availability data we receive from Amazon is correct relative to the marketplace we are requesting data from.

Location sensitive data

Data such as price and availability of Amazon products differ based on location the users location. The Parazun Amazon API ensures that the data you receive is accurate relative to the marketplace you are requesting from.

Solving CAPTCHAs

When Amazon serves a robot check page to requests made to the API we handle these checks by properly solving the CAPTCHA puzzle.

What are things I can do with the API?

On top of basic scraping functionality such as getting product details, offers and reviews with the Amazon product ASIN, here are some examples of tasks that can be done with the Parazun Amazon Products API:

Lookup all Amazon marketplace categories and their associated Node ID

The follow example retrieves a list of categories with their associated Node ID for the specified marketplace. In this case, the amazon.com US marketplace. This endpoint can be paginated to get all the categories. The Node ID are useful if you want to query for best sellers, new releases, most wished for and most gifted product rankings which is shown in examples below.

curl -X GET \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Host: parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com' \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Key: <Your RapidAPI Key>' \
	https://parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com/category/?size=1000&region=US&page=1

What the results look like:

{
	"items": [
		{
			"name": "Arts & Photography",
			"node_id": 1,
			"link": "https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=1"
		},
		{
			"name": "Biographies",
			"node_id": 2,
			"link": "https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2"
		},
		{
			"name": "Business & Money",
			"node_id": 3,
			"link": "https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=3"
		},
		...
}

Search for products by keyword and category

This example api call sends a search request to amazon.com with the specified keywords.

curl -X GET \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Host: parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com' \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Key: <Your RapidAPI Key>' \
	https://parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com/search/?keywords=android+phone&region=US&page=1

Example returned data:

{
    "current_page": 1,
    "num_pages": 20,
    "results": [
        {
            "asin": "B082T4F34B",
            "title": "Samsung Galaxy S10e, 128GB, Prism Black - Unlocked (Renewed)",
            "variants": null,
            "price": {
                "amount": 154.97,
                "list_price": 175,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            },
            "availability": "Only 9 left in stock - order soon.",
            "prime": false,
            "images": [
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/716g8PSrDaL._AC_UY218_.jpg",
                    "size": "1x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/716g8PSrDaL._AC_UY327_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "1.5x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/716g8PSrDaL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "2x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/716g8PSrDaL._AC_UY545_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "2.5x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/716g8PSrDaL._AC_UY654_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "3x"
                }
            ],
            "position": 1,
            "best_seller": false,
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.3,
                "num_ratings": 7972
            }
        },
        {
            "asin": "B08NWBY8YJ",
            "title": "Moto G Power | 2021 | 3-Day battery | Unlocked | Made for US by Motorola | 4/64GB | 48MP Camera | Gray",
            "variants": null,
            "price": {
                "amount": 168.99,
                "list_price": 249.99,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            },
            "availability": "Only 5 left in stock - order soon.",
            "prime": true,
            "images": [
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jKxwxAZFL._AC_UY218_.jpg",
                    "size": "1x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jKxwxAZFL._AC_UY327_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "1.5x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jKxwxAZFL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "2x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jKxwxAZFL._AC_UY545_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "2.5x"
                },
                {
                    "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jKxwxAZFL._AC_UY654_QL65_.jpg",
                    "size": "3x"
                }
            ],
            "position": 2,
            "best_seller": false,
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.3,
                "num_ratings": 3707
            }
        }
        ...
    ]
}

Get Amazon Best Seller rankings by category

In this example, we use Node ID 37 which is the “Pop” music category that we obtained from the category endpoint to make a request to the best seller endpoint. This scrapes the amazon.com best sellers ranking page for “Pop” category in the “CDs & Vinyl” department.

curl -X GET \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Host: parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com' \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Key: <Your RapidAPI Key>' \
	https://parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com/bestseller/by-category/?node_id=37&region=US

Example returned data:

{
    "department": {
        "name": "CDs & Vinyl",
        "alias": "music",
        "link": "https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-music-albums/zgbs/music/ref=zg_bs_unv_music_1_37_1"
    },
    "category": "Pop",
    "node_id": 37,
    "link": "https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/all/37/?pg=1&language=en_US",
    "rankings": [
        {
            "rank": 1,
            "title": "Proof[Compact Edition] [3 CD]",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Compact-3-CD-BTS/dp/B09ZF4XFYY/",
            "asin": "B09ZF4XFYY",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.7,
                "num_ratings": 327
            },
            "price": {
                "min": 20.98,
                "max": 20.98,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            }
        },
        {
            "rank": 2,
            "title": "Harry’s House",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Harrys-House-Harry-Styles/dp/B09WVYGXFW/",
            "asin": "B09WVYGXFW",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.8,
                "num_ratings": 954
            },
            "price": {
                "min": 31.97,
                "max": 31.97,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            }
        },
        {
            "rank": 3,
            "title": "Harry’s House",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Harrys-House-Harry-Styles/dp/B09WVZ63JH/",
            "asin": "B09WVZ63JH",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.8,
                "num_ratings": 954
            },
            "price": {
                "min": 10.97,
                "max": 10.97,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Get new product releases in any category

In the following example, we use the new releases endpoint passing the Node ID again obtained from the above category endpoint to to request for the new releases in this category.

curl -X GET \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Host: parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com' \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Key: <Your RapidAPI Key>' \
	https://parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com/new-releases/by-category/?node_id=37&region=US

Example returned data:

{
    "department": {
        "name": "CDs & Vinyl",
        "alias": "music",
        "link": "https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-music-albums/zgbs/music/ref=zg_bs_unv_music_1_40_1"
    },
    "category": "Rock",
    "node_id": 40,
    "link": "https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/all/40/?pg=1&language=en_US",
    "rankings": [
        {
            "rank": 1,
            "title": "Just Like That...",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Just-Like-That-Bonnie-Raitt/dp/B09SSR58KV/",
            "asin": "B09SSR58KV",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.8,
                "num_ratings": 406
            },
            "price": null
        },
        {
            "rank": 2,
            "title": "Abbey Road Anniversary",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Abbey-Road-Anniversary-LP-Beatles/dp/B07VNS48HD/",
            "asin": "B07VNS48HD",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.9,
                "num_ratings": 9783
            },
            "price": {
                "min": 19.97,
                "max": 19.97,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            }
        },
        {
            "rank": 3,
            "title": "Diamond Star Halos",
            "link": "https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Star-Halos-Def-Leppard/dp/B09V6YJHC9/",
            "asin": "B09V6YJHC9",
            "reviews": {
                "avg_rating": 4.6,
                "num_ratings": 503
            },
            "price": {
                "min": 13.79,
                "max": 13.79,
                "currency": "USD",
                "symbol": "$"
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Amazon’s movers and shakers rankings only have rankings for the top level departments and so in the following example, we use the department alias “electronics” to request for the ranking list. A list of all department aliases can be obtained using the departments endpoint.

curl -X GET \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Host: parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com' \
	 -H  'X-RapidAPI-Key: <Your RapidAPI Key>' \
	https://parazun-amazon-data.p.rapidapi.com/movers-and-shakers/by-department/?alias=electronics&region=US