Track Shopify competitor prices daily with products.json (no API key)

Description and use

Automated competitor price monitoring on Shopify using the public products.json endpoint and Apify, without API keys or HTML scraping.

Problem

Need to monitor competitor prices on Shopify stores without API keys or scraping.

Outcome

Fetched 1,201 products from 5 stores in 12.6 s, cost $1.20 on free plan; daily monitoring returns only changes, saving time and money.

Workflow

• Identify target Shopify stores or collections
• Configure Apify Actor with store URLs and options (maxProductsPerStore, onlyOnSale)
• Run Actor to fetch products.json, parse JSON, flatten data into rows
• Apply filters (keywords, vendors, price range, etc.) before charging
• Export results to CSV or store in database
• Set onlyChanges=true and monitorName to enable daily diff
• Schedule Actor in Apify Console to run daily
• Receive only changed or new product rows as alerts

Evidence

Every Shopify storefront has a public, documented-by-accident API that most people never look at: https://www.allbirds.com/products.json?limit=250&page=1

Source

Result: 1,201 products from 5 stores in 12.6 seconds, plus 2 free error rows. Cost on the Free plan: 1,201 × $0.001 = $1.20.

Source