1688 API in 2026: official access, its thresholds, and the alternative

What 1688's APIs give you

1688.com is the domestic wholesale marketplace of Alibaba Group. Its Open Platform groups APIs into solutions, each for a role. This is what the solution pages and API references linked below say, read on November 4, 2026. They are in Chinese and the translations are ours.

The general product call, alibaba.product.get, reads one product by ID but, in its reference, “can only query your own products”.

The developer registration is the same for all of them. The app-access page says a developer needs an Alibaba China-site account with an enterprise real-name-verified Alipay account bound to it (merchant-verified for enterprise developers). The app then starts with a traffic limit of 5,000, raised to 100,000 once Alibaba staff approve it and it is configured in the app market, a review the page puts within a week. The platform introduction limits the tools that merchants and buyers build for themselves to enterprise users, for their own use: selling them privately or authorizing other companies is forbidden.

If you buy on 1688 and want your software to place and pay orders, track parcels and receive English titles, the API does that and our Actor does not. The self-use solution's thresholds are set on purchases made through 1688, so it fits a company already buying at that volume. For research, or a supplier shortlist before you have bought anything, those sales do not exist yet.

Shortlist suppliers at your quantity

This script searches 1688 for vacuum insulated cups, reads 30 products with full details, keeps the ones 1688 types as factory that you can order 500 of, prices them at 500 units and writes a CSV:

import csv
from apify_client import ApifyClient

QUANTITY = 500

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("quarra/1688-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["保温杯"],  # vacuum insulated cup
    "sort": "sales",
    "scrapeDetails": True,
    "maxResultsPerSearch": 30,
    "maxItems": 30,
})
products = [p for p in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items()
            if p["type"] == "product" and p["status"] == "ok" and p["detailLevel"] == "full"]


def unit_price(p):
    """Price per unit at QUANTITY: the last quantity tier reached, else the single price."""
    tiers = [t for t in p["priceTiers"] or [] if t["minQuantity"] <= QUANTITY]
    return max(tiers, key=lambda t: t["minQuantity"])["price"] if tiers else p["price"]


offers = [p for p in products
          if p["supplierType"] == "factory"
          and (p["minOrderQuantity"] or 1) <= QUANTITY
          and (p["stock"] or 0) >= QUANTITY]
offers.sort(key=unit_price)

print(len(products), "products,", len(offers), "factory offers you can order", QUANTITY, "from")
for p in offers[:10]:
    print(f'{unit_price(p):6.2f} CNY | min order {p["minOrderQuantity"] or 1:>3} | '
          f'repeat buyers {p["supplierRepeatBuyerRate"]}% | sold {p["sold"]} | {p["url"]}')

with open("shortlist.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    w = csv.writer(f)
    w.writerow(["offerId", "unitPrice", "total", "minOrderQuantity", "repeatBuyerRate", "inspected", "sold", "url"])
    for p in offers:
        w.writerow([p["offerId"], unit_price(p), round(unit_price(p) * QUANTITY, 2), p["minOrderQuantity"],
                    p["supplierRepeatBuyerRate"], p.get("factoryInspected"), p["sold"], p["url"]])

Tested with apify-client 3.4 on November 4, 2026. With apify-client 2.x, write run["defaultDatasetId"] instead of run.default_dataset_id. It printed:

30 products, 28 factory offers you can order 500 from
  7.30 CNY | min order   1 | repeat buyers 58.72% | sold 594177 | https://detail.1688.com/offer/594208233163.html
  9.00 CNY | min order   1 | repeat buyers 59.95% | sold 93796 | https://detail.1688.com/offer/1032130276764.html
  9.40 CNY | min order   2 | repeat buyers 62.45% | sold 256205 | https://detail.1688.com/offer/794013801400.html

One factory offer was left out because it shows no stock figure. Of the 5 products with quantity tiers, 2 cost less at 500 units than at the minimum order. The other 25 have no tiers: 1688 prices them by variant, and price is then the lowest variant price. The 7.30 CNY offer above has 41 variants, priced from 7.30 to 11.49 CNY (priceRange), so to price the variant you want, read variants. supplierType is 1688's own label and 29 of these 30 products carry factory; factoryInspected is the narrower filter.

What a product looks like

The cheapest offer at 500 units in that run, shortened to some of its fields and 2 of its 41 variants:

{
  "type": "product",
  "status": "ok",
  "detailLevel": "full",
  "offerId": "594208233163",
  "url": "https://detail.1688.com/offer/594208233163.html",
  "title": "不锈钢保温杯316智能水杯男女士茶水分离高颜值礼品定制杯子批发",
  "price": 7.3,
  "priceRange": "7.30-11.49",
  "currency": "CNY",
  "unit": "个",
  "priceTiers": [],
  "minOrderQuantity": 1,
  "mixedOrder": {"minQuantity": 2, "minAmount": 100},
  "stock": 1273211,
  "sold": 594177,
  "soldPeriod": "全网销量",
  "rating": 5,
  "reviewCount": 164377,
  "shippingFee": 1.5,
  "dispatchTime": "承诺3天发货·常发中通快递",
  "supplierType": "factory",
  "supplierRepeatBuyerRate": 58.72,
  "supplierYears": 13,
  "factoryInspected": true,
  "updatedAt": "2026-11-04T12:07:42Z",
  "variants": [
    {"skuId": "6220918826480", "options": ["直杯 哑光深蓝", "（含税价）所有系列材质保真假一赔十"], "price": 7.3, "stock": 41979, "weightGrams": 283},
    {"skuId": "6220918826451", "options": ["橡胶漆款 杏雨梨云", "（含税价）所有系列材质保真假一赔十"], "price": 10.3, "stock": 49283, "weightGrams": 283},
    "..."
  ]
}

Titles, options and specifications are in Chinese, as on 1688. Supplier names, shop links and images are in the record too.

Watch the prices of your shortlist

Put the offer IDs you shortlisted in the script below. Each run reads them again and compares them with the reading saved by the previous run. It prints a price or quantity-tier change, an offer taken down (a free unavailable record), and stock that fell under the quantity you need:

import json
from pathlib import Path
from apify_client import ApifyClient

OFFERS = ["594208233163", "1032130276764", "794013801400", "975693178980", "998257618380", "1076380943016"]
NEEDED = 500  # units you plan to order
SNAPSHOT = Path("snapshot.json")


def changes(before, now):
    """Compare two readings, {offerId: fields, or None when the offer is gone}."""
    for offer_id, new in now.items():
        if offer_id not in before:
            continue
        old = before[offer_id]
        if new is None and old is not None:
            yield offer_id, "taken down"
        elif new and old:
            if new["price"] != old["price"] or new["tiers"] != old["tiers"]:
                yield offer_id, f'price {old["price"]} -> {new["price"]} CNY'
            if new["stock"] is not None and new["stock"] < NEEDED and (old["stock"] or 0) >= NEEDED:
                yield offer_id, f'stock {old["stock"]} -> {new["stock"]}, under {NEEDED}'


if __name__ == "__main__":
    client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
    run = client.actor("quarra/1688-scraper").call(run_input={"productUrls": OFFERS})

    now = {}
    for p in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
        if p["status"] == "ok":
            now[p["offerId"]] = {"price": p["price"], "tiers": p["priceTiers"], "stock": p["stock"]}
        elif p["status"] == "unavailable":
            now[p["offerId"]] = None

    before = json.loads(SNAPSHOT.read_text()) if SNAPSHOT.exists() else {}
    found = list(changes(before, now))
    for offer_id, what in found:
        print(offer_id, what)
    print(len(now), "offers read:", f"{len(found)} changes since the last reading" if before else "first reading saved")
    SNAPSHOT.write_text(json.dumps(now))

Run it every day from cron or another scheduler. Tested with apify-client 3.4 on November 4, 2026: the first run saved 6 offers in 22 seconds, and a second run less than a minute later read them in 8 seconds and found no change. Each run cost $0.035, which is $1.05 for 30 daily runs. The comparison itself was also checked on a hand-edited reading, where it reported a price change, a stock fall under 500 and a removed offer.

Limits

• A search returns at most 2,000 results, the most 1688 shows for one search. Several keywords or price ranges (minPrice and maxPrice, in CNY) go further.
• Titles, options and specifications are in Chinese. English keywords are accepted. Prices are in CNY before shipping, and shippingFee is the shipping within China.
• Prices for members only, coupons and shipping costs outside China are not collected.
• When 1688 does not serve the full details of a product at that moment, you get its search data with a detailsNote, charged as a search result.
• An offer that no longer exists comes back as a free unavailable record, an offer listed without any price as noPrice, and an input that fails as a free error record whose retryable field says if a later run may work.
• Supplier fields are company and shop data, and some suppliers are sole proprietors, which can make their names personal data under laws such as the GDPR. 1688's terms and the law that applies to you govern how you use the data.

What it costs

Plus $0.005 per run start at the default memory. The 30 products above cost $0.155, and the 6 offers of the watch script $0.035. A 2,000-result search without details costs $5.00 plus the start fee. Offers that no longer exist, offers without a price, errors and duplicates are not charged. Set a maximum cost per run and the run stops before going over it.

Questions

Does 1688 have an official API?

Yes. The Open Platform at open.1688.com publishes APIs by solution. Registration asks for an Alibaba China-site account with an enterprise real-name-verified Alipay account, and the app is reviewed within a week, per the app-access page. Keyword search and product details come mainly with the cross-border solutions, where the self-use one adds the whitelist and the monthly thresholds described above.

Can an individual use the 1688 API?

The pages we read describe no route for individuals. Developer registration asks for an enterprise real-name-verified Alipay account, and the platform introduction limits the tools that merchants and buyers build for themselves to enterprise users, for their own use.

Can I get 1688 product data in English?

The official search and detail calls take a country parameter and return translated titles, en and ja in the references. Our Actor delivers titles, options and specifications in Chinese, as on 1688.

Do I need a 1688 account to use the Actor?

No. The Actor uses no 1688 account, cookies or API key.