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    · 11 min read

    Takealot Scraper: 16 Data Fields, Up to 1,000 Free Results/Month

    By CrawlerBros Engineering Team

    Each record carries 16 fields, including the current price in ZAR, original price, discount percentage, and product URLs. A thousand results costs $5.00 on the free-plan price, and you can test the output using Apify's monthly allowance. This collector provides access to product listings, daily deals, and specific categories from South Africa's largest online retailer. It is built for e-commerce analysts and price monitoring teams tracking South African retail, but not for teams needing service listings, which require Snupit Scraper - South Africa Home Services Directory.

    Try it: open Takealot Scraper on Apify, sign in on the free plan and run the prefilled example.

    Can you try Takealot Scraper before paying?

    Yes. Apify's free plan includes $5.00 of prepaid usage every month and asks for no credit card. At $0.005 per result, that covers up to 1,000 results of Takealot Scraper a month, before run-start charges and platform usage.

    The example request further down caps maxItems at 20, so a first run returns at most 20 results and costs at most $0.10 in result charges. That is enough to see the real shape of the data before deciding anything.

    Takealot Scraper was last updated on 2026-06-06. It is one of 1,725 Actors CrawlerBros publishes on Apify, which together have 674,790 lifetime public runs and an average rating of 4.63 out of 5 across 416 reviews.

    What does it cost to run Takealot Scraper?

    Each result costs $0.005 on Apify's free plan, which is $5.00 per 1,000 results. Starting a run is charged separately at $0.005 per GB of Actor memory. Apify also bills the platform usage each run consumes, at the rates of your Apify plan, on top of these charges.

    Apify plan Per result Per 1,000 results
    FREE $0.005 $5.00
    BRONZE $0.00433 $4.33
    SILVER $0.00367 $3.67
    GOLD $0.003 $3.00
    PLATINUM $0.003 $3.00
    DIAMOND $0.003 $3.00

    Your output volume directly determines the result fees for each run. The primary setting driving result charges is maxItems, alongside the breadth of productIds or search parameters supplied. To evaluate output quality cheaply before running broad collections, set maxItems to 20 for your initial test.

    How do you run Takealot Scraper from the API?

    The schema marks 1 of its 9 controls as required: mode. Every value in the payload below comes from the published schema's own prefills, which means you can paste it, swap the token, and get a real result.

    Call the synchronous endpoint to start a run and receive dataset items in one request:

    curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/crawlerbros~takealot-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"search","keyword":"samsung","productIds":[],"sortBy":"relevance","inStockOnly":false,"maxItems":20}'

    The same run from Python, using the official client:

    from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
  "mode": "search",
  "keyword": "samsung",
  "productIds": [],
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "inStockOnly": False,
  "maxItems": 20
}

run = client.actor("crawlerbros~takealot-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

    And from Node.js:

    import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' })

const input = {
  "mode": "search",
  "keyword": "samsung",
  "productIds": [],
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "inStockOnly": false,
  "maxItems": 20
}

const run = await client.actor('crawlerbros~takealot-scraper').call(input)
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems()
console.log(items)

    That endpoint blocks until the run completes. Fine while you are testing a handful of records, risky once a run takes minutes: a dropped connection loses the response even though the run itself finished. Switch to an asynchronous start with polling or a webhook before you schedule anything.

    Which Takealot Scraper inputs matter, and which can you skip?

    The primary control is mode, which dictates whether the scraper searches keywords, crawls product details by ID, browses categories, or pulls daily deals. For keyword searches, use keyword, or provide categorySlug for browsing specific categories. Beginners should leave minPrice, maxPrice, and sortBy at default settings until basic output structure is confirmed.

    • mode (string): What to scrape from Takealot. Default: "search".
    • keyword (string): Keyword to search for (mode=search).
    • productIds (array): Takealot product IDs (numeric, e.g. 72830789). Default: [].
    • categorySlug (string): Category path from the Takealot URL, e.g. 'electronics/phones' or 'computers-and-tablets'.
    • sortBy (string): How to sort search results. Default: "relevance".
    • minPrice (integer): Filter products with price above this value (in South African Rand).
    • maxPrice (integer): Filter products with price below this value (in South African Rand).
    • inStockOnly (boolean): Only include products currently in stock. Default: false.
    • maxItems (integer): Maximum number of products to return. Default: 20.

    Fixed-choice controls: mode accepts search (Search products by keyword), productDetails (Product details by product ID), categoryBrowse (Browse by category), dailyDeals (Daily deals); sortBy accepts relevance, price_asc (Price: Low to High), price_desc (Price: High to Low), rating_desc (Top Rated), new_arrivals (New Arrivals).

    What does Takealot Scraper return?

    Returned records provide actionable retail data including productId, brand, price in ZAR, rating, and inStock flags. They do not contain seller contact details, buyer identities, or historical transaction logs.

    • productId: Takealot internal product ID
    • title: Product name
    • brand: Brand name
    • price: Current price in South African Rand (ZAR)
    • originalPrice: Original price before discount
    • discountPercent: Discount percentage (if on sale)
    • rating: Average customer rating (0-5)
    • reviewCount: Number of customer reviews
    • availability: Stock status (e.g., "In stock", "Out of stock")
    • inStock: Boolean stock flag
    • imageUrl: Main product image URL
    • productUrl: Direct URL to the product page
    • freeDelivery: True if free delivery is available
    • tsin: Takealot Stock Item Number
    • isDailyDeal: True if the product is a daily deal
    • scrapedAt: ISO timestamp of when the record was scraped

    These are the documented fields. Optional ones can be empty on a given record, so measure how often each field your deliverable depends on is populated across a real sample before automating the handoff.

    How do you build the workflow end to end?

    Open Takealot Scraper and work through these in order. Each step ends with something to check, so a bad configuration surfaces on a small run rather than a scheduled one.

    1. Select the operational mode in mode depending on whether you are querying keywords, exact product IDs, category trees, or deals.
    2. Set maxItems to 20 to limit dataset size and keep result charges low during initial testing.
    3. Populate keyword if using search mode, or categorySlug if using categoryBrowse mode.
    4. Configure optional price filters minPrice and maxPrice to restrict listings to your target range in ZAR.
    5. Execute the Actor run and verify that output items populate as expected in the dataset view.
    6. Inspect key output attributes like productId, price, availability, and scrapedAt for completeness.
    7. Expand maxItems to your production requirements once payload schema validation passes.

    How do you apply it? Three worked playbooks

    These are Takealot Scraper's own documented use cases, each worked through as an operating pattern rather than a description.

    Use case 1: Price monitoring

    Outcome: Track price changes for products over time

    Configure: mode: "productDetails", productIds: ["72830789", "84920112"], maxItems: 50

    Working method: Define a targeted array of product IDs and trigger scheduled daily runs to track price and discountPercent shifts over time.

    Deliverable: Time-series dataset tracking price movements, promotional discounts, and stock status across specified target items.

    Stop condition: Stop if continuous runs return null values for price or report unexpected structural schema shifts.

    Use case 2: Competitor research

    Outcome: Analyze product pricing in South Africa

    Configure: mode: "categoryBrowse", categorySlug: "computers-and-tablets", sortBy: "price_asc", maxItems: 100

    Working method: Execute category-wide extractions across major retail sectors, comparing pricing tiers, brand distributions, and product coverage.

    Deliverable: Structured export of catalog listings across top categories with brand breakdown and price positioning statistics.

    Stop condition: Halt execution if categorySlug returns empty results or encounters invalid route responses.

    Use case 3: Deal discovery

    Outcome: Automatically find discounted products

    Configure: mode: "dailyDeals", inStockOnly: true, maxItems: 200

    Working method: Query the daily deals mode on a recurring schedule to isolate available products offering high discount percentages.

    Deliverable: Filtered list of active daily deal items with calculated discount percentages and stock verification flags.

    Stop condition: Terminate run if returned deal lists fall below required stock availability conditions.

    What breaks, and how do you design around it?

    When hitting the 500 maxItems limit on broad searches, split queries using minPrice and maxPrice ranges to capture full category depths. If regional inventory differences affect availability, run separate requests targeting specific product IDs.

    When should you not use Takealot Scraper?

    Do not use this scraper if you need to monitor general marketplace goods across different local e-commerce networks outside Takealot. If you need broader South African retail listings across books, electronics, fashion, and home goods from an alternative marketplace, use Loot South Africa Scraper. If your project requires service provider leads rather than physical retail products, build your pipeline around Snupit Scraper - South Africa Home Services Directory. Avoid running large multi-category extraction jobs without price filtering, as unconstrained queries hit dataset limits quickly.

    What should you check before trusting the output?

    • Verify that price and originalPrice return as valid non-negative numbers in ZAR.
    • Ensure productId and tsin are non-null for reliable database primary key mapping.
    • Check that inStock is a boolean and availability represents a valid stock status for the item.
    • Confirm discountPercent is correctly populated when isDailyDeal is true.
    • Monitor scrapedAt ISO timestamps to detect stale data delivery in automated pipelines.

    None of this proves a record is correct. It gives a scheduled Takealot Scraper run defined points where it should stop instead of quietly passing bad data downstream.

    Frequently asked questions

    How much does it cost to scrape 1,000 Takealot products?

    Scraping 1,000 results costs $5.00 on the free-plan price of $0.005 per result. Apify charges platform usage on top of these result charges. You can process up to 1,000 results per month within Apify's $5.00 free tier allowance before paying for additional result charges.

    Which mode should I use for price tracking?

    Use productDetails mode and pass an array of Takealot numeric IDs to productIds. This returns focused updates on specific products without wasting dataset capacity on broader search results, keeping your per-result costs targeted to your specific inventory.

    How do I extract only discounted items from Takealot?

    Set mode to dailyDeals to scrape active promotions, or use search mode combined with sorting options to discover items marked down from their original price. The output includes originalPrice and discountPercent for these items.

    Can I filter Takealot products by stock status?

    Yes, set inStockOnly to true in your input parameters. The output includes an inStock boolean flag and an availability field indicating if an item is currently available or not for purchase.

    Where do I find the categorySlug parameter for browsing?

    Find the target category on Takealot's website and copy the path trailing takealot.com in the browser URL. Common examples include electronics/phones or computers-and-tablets, which can be pasted directly into the categorySlug field.

    Where to go next

    When you are ready to run it, open Takealot Scraper on Apify; the free plan covers up to 1,000 results a month.

    Start with the Takealot Scraper Actor page for the current input schema, pricing tier, and run history.

    Other Actors we maintain for related data:

    Related guides:

    Resources

    • Actor documentation, input schema, and pricing: verified against the published Actor on 2026-09-26.

    • Actor last updated by its maintainers on 2026-06-06.

    • Run outcome figures cover the 30 day public window ending 2026-09-26.

    • Takealot Scraper on Apify

    Featured actors

    Takealot Scraper

    Scrape Takealot - South Africa's largest online retailer. Search products, get daily deals, browse categories, and fetch individual product details including prices, ratings, availability, and promotions.

    Run on Apify ↗