The short answer
AliExpress opens two APIs to outside developers on its Open Platform: an Affiliate API for AliExpress Portals publishers, and a Dropshipping API for buyers who resell its products. Both need a developer account and a registered app. Neither returns product reviews: none of the 186 methods in AliExpress's public API reference does. The Affiliate API also leaves out stock and returns at most 20 variants per product unless you name them. If you have neither an affiliate nor a dropshipping account, or you need reviews, the remaining route is to read the public product pages, which is what a scraper does.
The two APIs, side by side
We read the AliExpress Open Platform API reference and its developer guides on October 10, 2026. Here is what each one asks of you and gives back.
| Affiliate API | Dropshipping API | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | AliExpress Portals publishers, who earn a commission on sales they refer | Buyers who resell AliExpress products and place orders through the API |
| What you need | A Portals account, a developer profile that AliExpress approves, then an app you create and put online | An AliExpress account, a developer account, an app of the Drop Shipping type, and an access token from authorizing that app with your account |
| Search | Yes, aliexpress.affiliate.product.query | Yes, aliexpress.ds.text.search, plus search by image |
| Product details | aliexpress.affiliate.productdetail.get: prices, main and small images, video, category, store, rating, recent sales, your commission rate and affiliate link | aliexpress.ds.product.get: description, specifications, images and video, store ratings, average rating and number of reviews, sales |
| Variants (SKUs) | aliexpress.affiliate.product.sku.detail.get: price, options, image, shipping fee and delivery days per variant; at most 20 variants per call unless you list their IDs; no stock field in the documented response | Every variant with its price, options, image and available stock |
| Prices | For the ship-to country, currency and language you pass | For the ship-to country you pass; AliExpress states that the price “depends on the user's account data” |
| Shipping | aliexpress.affiliate.product.shipping.get | aliexpress.ds.freight.query |
| Reviews | No | No, only the average rating and the count |
If you already dropship from AliExpress, the Dropshipping API is the cleaner choice for the products you sell: it is the official route, it returns stock per variant, and the same app places your orders. If you are an affiliate, the Affiliate API gives you the links that earn your commission, which no scraper can. Both are built for those two businesses. For market research, price monitoring, catalog analysis or reviews, you would be opening an affiliate or reseller account only to reach data that any visitor sees on the product page.
Getting access
For the Affiliate API, AliExpress's quick start asks you to register an AliExpress Portals account first, then create a developer account on the Open Platform, fill in your profile with the right developer type and its documents, and wait for the profile to be approved. You then create an app, which gets an App Key and an App Secret, and apply to put it online.
For the Dropshipping API, the guide asks for an aliexpress.com account, a developer account, and an app of the Drop Shipping type. Every product call then carries an access token, obtained by authorizing your app with your AliExpress account through OAuth (/auth/token/create), and refreshed when it expires.
Requests are signed with your App Secret. The calls go to https://api-sg.aliexpress.com/sync, and AliExpress publishes SDKs for Java, PHP, .NET, Ruby and Python.
What neither API gives you
- Reviews. The text of reviews, their photos, the variant bought and the reviewer's country are on the product page, not in any public API method.
- Prices as a visitor sees them, without an account. Dropshipping prices depend on your account, and both APIs need one.
- Search and variants in one step. In both APIs, the search returns no variants; they are one more call per product.
Getting the same data without an API key
The AliExpress Scraper reads the public search and product pages, as a visitor in the country you choose, without an AliExpress account. A search with full details returns each product with every variant, its price and stock, all images, the store, shipping to your country and the specifications, in one run:
{
"searchQueries": ["magsafe phone case"],
"maxItems": 100,
"scrapeDetails": true,
"shipTo": "US",
"currency": "USD",
"includeReviews": true,
"maxReviewsPerProduct": 20
}Product URLs from any country site, or bare product IDs, go in productUrls. Prices, availability and shipping follow shipTo and currency, the way they change on AliExpress when you change your delivery country; titles and specifications follow language.
What comes back
A real product from a run on October 10, 2026, shortened: two of its 250 variants, one shipping option, and some fields left out.
{
"type": "product",
"detailLevel": "full",
"productId": "1005009660731441",
"title": "Luxury Frosted Phone Case For iPhone 17 16 15 14 13 12 ...",
"currency": "USD",
"price": 1.09,
"originalPrice": 3.45,
"discountPercent": 68,
"rating": 4.7,
"reviewCount": 1754,
"soldCount": 10000,
"totalStock": 148060,
"images": ["https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/Sf68f87a2409143778e6805b4dafd064fF.jpg", "..."],
"skus": [
{ "skuId": "12000049795776652", "attributes": { "Color": "Green", "Material": "For iPhone 16 Plus" },
"price": 1.09, "originalPrice": 3.68, "stock": 872, "available": true },
{ "skuId": "12000049795776653", "attributes": { "Color": "Green", "Material": "For iPhone 16e" },
"price": 1.09, "originalPrice": 3.71, "stock": 863, "available": true }
],
"shipping": [
{ "method": "AliExpress Selection Standard Shipping", "fee": 1.99, "currency": "USD", "shipFrom": "China",
"shipTo": "US", "deliveryDaysMin": 8, "deliveryDaysMax": 13 }
],
"store": { "id": "1101353964", "name": "Yaolanhu Store", "rating": 4.9, "positiveRate": 94.1, "followers": 2639 }
}That product has 16 images and 250 variants; the Affiliate API's variant call would return 20 of them per call, without stock. Each review comes back as its own row, with its rating, text, AliExpress's translation, date, variant bought, photos, helpful votes and the reviewer's country. Reviewer names and avatars are not collected.
Run it from Python
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("quarra/aliexpress-scraper").call(run_input={
"productUrls": ["https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009660731441.html"],
"shipTo": "US",
"currency": "USD",
"includeReviews": True,
"maxReviewsPerProduct": 10,
})
for row in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
if row["type"] == "product":
print(row["title"], row["price"], row["currency"], len(row["skus"]), "variants")
elif row["type"] == "review":
print(row["rating"], row["date"], row["text"][:80])Tested with apify-client 3.2. With apify-client 2.x, write run["defaultDatasetId"] instead of run.default_dataset_id.
Limits
- AliExpress limits how many product pages it serves in a short period. When it does, a run with full details keeps going with the search data for the remaining products, charged as search results and marked
"detailLevel": "search". For thousands of products with full details, split them across runs. - AliExpress shows at most 60 pages of 60 products per search. Several keywords or price ranges go further.
- Product pages and their reviews can contain personal data covered by laws such as the GDPR. Collect what you need for a legitimate purpose.
What it costs
| Apify plan | Search results, per 1,000 | Products with full details, per 1,000 | Reviews, per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free and Starter | $2.50 | $5.00 | $0.50 |
| Scale | $2.25 | $4.50 | $0.45 |
| Business and above | $2.00 | $4.00 | $0.40 |
Plus $0.005 per run at the default memory. Products that do not exist or are not sold to your country, and errors, are not charged. On the Free plan, 1,000 products with full details and 20 reviews each cost about $15.
Run it on the Apify Store
Products with full details cost $5.00 per 1,000, search results $2.50 and reviews $0.50 per 1,000 on the Free plan, plus $0.005 per run. Errors and empty results are not charged, and you can set a maximum cost per run.