# WooCommerce Catalog & Price Change Monitor

Export public WooCommerce products, prices and availability. Compare complete catalog snapshots for price changes, restocks and products entering or leaving a scope. No API key required.

Canonical product page: https://mayd-it.com/data-tools/actors/woocommerce-catalog-monitor/
Public Actor: https://apify.com/maydit/woocommerce-catalog-monitor

## Example input

```json
{
  "storeUrls": [
    "https://mercantile.wordpress.org"
  ],
  "mode": "catalog",
  "maxProductsPerStore": 200
}
```

## Full guide

![WooCommerce catalogs and changes — illustrative workflow](https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/YGxD9JRpduom8Q5Zd/records/woocommerce-catalog-monitor-472c56fd18f9.png?signature=pvdLE9hvyR6azXl5M94p)

## WooCommerce catalogs and changes

For assortment research and availability monitoring, export public WooCommerce products or compare them with a complete saved catalog scope.

**Coverage:** Stores exposing the public WooCommerce Store API and permitting access. No customer, order or private inventory data.

[Open this Actor in Console](https://console.apify.com/actors/vlrB2jQW9bgP8CWcj/input) · [First run](#try-this-actor) · [Results](#result-preview) · [Cost](#usage-and-pricing) · [Full guide](#full-guide)

## Try this Actor

1. Use the WordPress Mercantile catalog example below, with `mode` set to `catalog` and `maxProductsPerStore` set to 200. Review or lower that cap before running.
2. Open the dataset for product observations. Inspect each store's `SUMMARY` for completeness, stop reasons and baseline updates before using changes.

**Read the results correctly:** A product leaving a filtered scope is not proof of deletion. Public stock flags are not quantities, and price strings retain the source currency and precision.

**Copyable input** — use the JSON editor in Console.

```json
{
  "storeUrls": ["https://mercantile.wordpress.org"],
  "mode": "catalog",
  "maxProductsPerStore": 200
}
```

## Result preview

The dataset view highlights these columns:

- **Source store** · `storeUrl`
- **Product ID** · `productId`
- **Product name** · `name`
- **SKU** · `sku`
- **Currency** · `currency`
- **Current public price** · `price`

Use the original source links and the field definitions below when interpreting the results. CSV works well for flat columns; JSON preserves nested values.

## Usage and pricing

Base result rate on the FREE tier: **$2 per 1,000 product results**. The [Pricing tab](https://apify.com/maydit/woocommerce-catalog-monitor/pricing) shows your plan's result rate and any Actor Start charge. Set a small result limit for the first run; the requested limit is not a guarantee of that many results.

---

## Full guide

Export products from public WooCommerce Store APIs, or run a recurring monitor that returns the changes since the last complete catalog snapshot. No API key, browser or proxy is required for supported stores.

Use this for competitor assortment checks, supplier availability monitoring, and product exports. Every row includes its store, observation time and catalog completeness. Every run writes a per-store `SUMMARY` report.

### Quick start

Run with empty input to retrieve up to 50 products from WordPress Mercantile:

```json
{}
```

Export another supported store:

Use the [copyable first-run input](#try-this-actor) above.

The supplied URL must be a WooCommerce store base URL, optionally with a WordPress installation subdirectory. The store must expose `/wp-json/wc/store/v1/products` and allow it in `robots.txt`. Stores that disable or restrict this endpoint are reported as failed sources. This Actor does not bypass HTTP 401/403 responses or robots restrictions.

### Monitor changes

```json
{
  "storeUrls": ["https://mercantile.wordpress.org"],
  "mode": "changes",
  "maxProductsPerStore": 1000,
  "baselineKey": "merch-monitor",
  "minimumPriceChangePercent": 0
}
```

The first changes run emits all initial products with `changeTypes: ["baseline"]`. A subsequent unchanged run succeeds with zero rows and a warning. To repeat the initial comparison, select a new `baselineKey`.

The named key-value store `woocommerce-catalog-monitor-state-v1` holds baselines independently of individual run storage. Each scope includes the normalized store URL, search, category IDs, availability filter, sale filter, and baseline namespace. Changing any of those starts a separate scope. Changing the run limits or price threshold does not start a new scope. Catalog mode never writes or advances baselines.

**A partial crawl never replaces a baseline or emits removals.** Product limits, page limits, timeouts, bad pages, changing source totals, and duplicate products across pages make a crawl incomplete. Observed products may still produce changes, with `catalogComplete: false`. Check `SUMMARY` and raise limits if the intended scope is larger. Exactly reaching the product limit can still be complete when the source headers confirm the full count.

Baselines advance only after output is saved. Avoid overlapping runs using the same baseline key and scope. A pre-write check detects many concurrent updates, but the key-value store does not provide an atomic lock.

If the dataset charge limit prevents another row from being saved, the run stops cleanly, preserves that store's previous baseline, and reports `SUMMARY.stoppedOnChargeLimit: true`. Emitted counts reflect saved rows; remaining stores appear in `notProcessed`. Earlier saved rows are retained.

### Inputs

| Field | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `storeUrls` | WordPress Mercantile | Up to 20 stores; omitted or empty uses the sample. |
| `mode` | `catalog` | Current products, or `changes` compared with a complete baseline. |
| `maxProductsPerStore` | 50 | 1–5,000 observed products per store. Removal events can add output rows. |
| `maxPagesPerStore` | 100 | 1–100 pages; up to 100 products per page. |
| `search` | none | Public Store API text search, up to 200 characters. |
| `categoryIds` | none | Up to 50 store-specific integer category IDs. |
| `onSale` | false | True restricts to sale products; false includes all. |
| `stockStatus` | `any` | `any`, `instock`, `outofstock`, or `onbackorder`. |
| `minimumPriceChangePercent` | 0 | Minimum current-price movement for the `price_changed` label. |
| `baselineKey` | `default` | Independent monitor namespace; letters, digits, `_`, `-`; 1–80 characters. |
| `maxRunSeconds` | 240 | 30–3,600 seconds, also limited by the platform deadline. |

The threshold applies to current price only. Availability, currency, regular/sale price and other detail changes can still emit a record. A move from a zero current price always qualifies. Below-threshold changes still advance the complete baseline, so thresholds measure changes since the previous complete run, not cumulative movement since the last emitted event.

### Output

One dataset row represents a current product, or a product leaving a completely read scope. Standard Apify exports support JSON, CSV and Excel; JSON preserves nested before/after records.

| Fields | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `storeUrl`, `productId`, `productUrl`, `name`, `sku`, `type` | Source identity. |
| `currency`, `currencyMinorUnit`, `price`, `priceMinor`, `regularPrice`, `salePrice`, `priceRange` | Public prices; decimal amounts are **strings** to preserve precision. |
| `onSale`, `isInStock`, `isOnBackorder` | Public status, or null when absent. These are not inventory quantities. |
| `averageRating`, `reviewCount` | Public product rating summary, when supplied. |
| `categories`, `imageUrls`, `variationCount` | Public catalog details; image URLs are capped at 20 and categories at 100 per product. |
| `observedAt`, `catalogComplete` | Observation time and whether the entire scope was read. |
| `changeTypes` | One or more labels listed below. |
| `previousValues`, `currentValues` | Before/after normalized product records; null where no side exists. |

Change labels: `snapshot` (catalog export), `baseline` (initial changes run), `added_to_scope`, `removed_from_scope`, `price_changed`, `availability_changed`, `currency_changed`, and `details_changed`.

`removed_from_scope` means absent from a complete current response for that scope. A product may have stopped matching a filter, become unpublished, or been removed; the Actor does not claim to know which. Removed rows retain the last observed product fields at the top level; `currentValues` is null.

`SUMMARY` reports observed/emitted counts, expected source totals, pages read, errors, completeness, stop reasons and baseline updates. One failed store does not discard other usable results. If no products were observed and no source completed legitimately, the Actor fails with a source diagnostic. A complete empty scope and an unchanged comparison succeed with warnings. Error rows are never written to the paid dataset.

### Prices and limitations

Launch price: **$2 per 1,000 emitted records** ($0.002 each) on Free/Bronze, with an Actor Start event of $0.00005. Silver is 20% lower and Gold/Platinum/Diamond 40% lower. Changes mode charges only emitted records, including initial baseline and removal records. Consult the live Pricing tab for the applied rate.

- This reads the [official public WooCommerce Store API](https://developer.woocommerce.com/docs/apis/store-api/), not the authenticated WooCommerce management API.
- It returns publicly published products. It does not log in, supply product passwords, access customers/orders, or change carts.
- Public prices may depend on a merchant's currency or tax plugins. `price` is what the API returned in its declared currency. Product price ranges are retained; exact variation prices and inventory quantities are not promised.
- Optional fields can be null or empty. This Actor does not infer sales volume, revenue, inventory quantity, or store ownership.
- An API is not a transactional database snapshot. Stable sorting, total checks and duplicate checks reduce unsafe comparisons, but changes during collection can still affect results.
- A source can block cloud IPs or return different results from different locations. Such failures are reported, without proxy fallback.
- Use store data in accordance with the merchant's terms and your authorization.

### Development

`npm test` runs fixture tests for money precision, filters/scopes, baseline safety, pagination, error-shaped responses, robots denial, deadlines and bounded retries. The shared `src/runtime.js` supplies bounded requests with public network validation and redirect checks. Use isolated `CRAWLEE_STORAGE_DIR` directories for local execution.

The documented catalog examples illustrate supported inputs. Running an example does not create a schedule or change an external store.

## Help with your run

Open the **Issues** tab on this Actor with the run URL, the input field that caused trouble and what you expected to receive. Remove API keys and private information before posting.

[Explore more Mayd-It Actors](https://apify.com/maydit)

## Understand your run

Open **Run report** in the run’s Output tab for saved-record counts, reported source issues and limits, and suggested next steps. Use **CSV export** to take the saved results into a spreadsheet. The existing JSON results and detailed machine-readable summary remain available.

The report reflects this run’s recorded coverage. A successful run or a saved result does not establish that every possible source record was collected.