Every Shopify storefront exposes its full product catalog through a public endpoint — and most paid "product research tools" just repackage it for $50+/month. Here's how to do it yourself, for free.
The secret: /products.json
Every Shopify store has a public endpoint:
https:///products.json
No auth. No API key. No captcha. The store's own frontend uses this endpoint to render — so it's open by default.
Try it right now — open this in your browser:
https://allbirds.com/products.json?limit=5
You'll see JSON with products, prices, variants, compare-at values, tags, and images.
How it works
- 250 products per page — paginate with ?page=2, ?page=3...
- Compare-at price = the sale signal. When compare_at > price, that product is actively on sale — the clearest "this seller is pushing a winner" signal in product research.
- Works on huge stores — I tested gymshark.com: 9,466 products / 57,532 SKUs, paginated cleanly.
A minimal scraper (Python, ~40 lines)
import requests
def fetch_products(store, max_pages=50):
products = []
for page in range(1, max_pages + 1):
r = requests.get(f"https://{store}/products.json", params={"limit": 250, "page": page}, timeout=30)
if r.status_code != 200:
break
items = r.json().get("products", [])
products.extend(items)
if len(items) < 250:
break
return products
products = fetch_products("allbirds.com")
print(f"{len(products)} products fetched")
What you can do with it
- Dropshipping research: scan competitor stores → find price gaps and what they're pushing
- Competitor price monitoring: snapshot daily, diff the data → catch price changes within 24h
- Product research: full catalog audits with price distribution
Production-ready version
I packaged this into an open-source tool: Shopify Scout
Features:
- Automatic pagination (handles 10,000+ product stores)
- Price intelligence: range, median, average
- Compare-at sale signal detection
- Keyword and price filters
- Clean Markdown report output
- MIT licensed — free to use and modify
pip install requests
python shopify_scout.py allbirds.com --sort price-desc
Caveats
- Some stores disable the endpoint — the script tells you clearly.
- Use only for stores you have permission to research, and respect their terms.
If this saved you time, star the repo: https://github.com/zhaoheng588-tech/shopify-scout 🚀
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