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AliExpress Product API: Search, Reviews and Shipping

2 Oct 2026Perceptlayer6 min read

AliExpress's own Open Platform is built for affiliates, sellers and dropshippers, each with their own app keys and approval. To read AliExpress product data as JSON without that, the Perceptlayer AliExpress API chains four GET endpoints: search (required query, page, sort), product (product_id), product-reviews (product_id, page, page_size, filter) and product-shipping (product_id, country). Each successful call costs 1 credit.

What does AliExpress's own API cover?

AliExpress's Open Platform is organised around who is calling. Its getting-started guide has separate tracks for affiliate developers, sellers' apps and dropshipping developers, and seller apps must be authorised by the seller before they call any API (AliExpress Open Platform, 2026). The affiliate programme accepts publishers with an online presence and traffic (AliExpress Portals, 2026).

That's the right route if you promote AliExpress products for commission or run a store on it. If you need to read product listings, reviews and shipping options for research, price monitoring or an agent, without joining a programme, the AliExpress API returns them as JSON with one key. Data is collected from publicly available sources and returned as found at the time of the call.

Which AliExpress endpoints are there?

Nine GET endpoints in three groups: finding products, reading one product, and reading a store. Every one costs 1 credit per successful call. Most parameters are required, so a call missing one fails with invalid_parameters (422) and costs nothing. The table lists each endpoint with its required inputs.

The chain this guide follows is search, then product, then reviews and shipping. The product description is a separate call because it takes a description_ref rather than the product ID; read that reference from the product response.

How do you search AliExpress products?

Call GET /v1/aliexpress/search with all three required parameters: the query, the page number and a sort. Add min_price and max_price to bound the price, ship_from to restrict where items ship from, and filters[] for the site's own filters. This request asks for the first page of phone cases, sorted by number of orders:

curl "https://api.perceptlayer.com/v1/aliexpress/search?query=phone+case&page=1&sort=orders" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $API_KEY"

Keys go in the X-API-Key header and start with sk_live_. Get a free API key, and see the authentication docs for the details.

autocomplete is a quick way to find the wording buyers use: send a partial term as query and it returns AliExpress's suggestions, which make better search queries than guesses.

What does a search response contain?

Our recorded search for query=wireless earbuds&page=1&sort=orders returns total_results 16,557 with page_size 60, and a results array. This is the first result, trimmed with …:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "query": "wireless earbuds",
    "sort": "orders",
    "page": 1,
    "page_size": 60,
    "total_results": 16557,
    "has_more": true,
    "results": [
      {
        "product_id": "3256812408115438",
        "title": "HTC NE79 TWS Bluetooth 6.0 Earbuds AI Translation 135 Languages ENC Noise Cancelling HiFi Stereo Headphones with LED Display",
        "url": "https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256812408115438.html",
        "price": { "amount": 4.35, "currency": "USD", "formatted": "US $4.35" },
        "original_price": { "amount": 17.31, "currency": "USD", "formatted": "US $17.31" },
        "discount_percent": 74,
        "rating": 4.9,
        "sold_count": 17921,
        "sold_text": "10,000+ sold",
        "selling_points": ["Fastest delivery in 6 days"],
        "is_sponsored": false,
        …
      },
      …
    ]
  }
}

product_id is what the product, reviews and shipping endpoints take. price.amount is the price shown, and original_price with discount_percent shows the advertised discount: 4.35 against 17.31 here. sold_count is a number while sold_text is the rounded label, so use the number for ranking. is_sponsored marks paid placement; filter on it before you treat order rank as popularity.

How do you get a product's reviews?

Call GET /v1/aliexpress/product-reviews with the product_id and the three paging and filter parameters, all required. page and page_size control the paging, and filter picks which reviews: all, local, image (reviews with photos) or additional. Nothing is documented about the largest page_size the endpoint accepts, so test it in the playground before you pick one.

curl "https://api.perceptlayer.com/v1/aliexpress/product-reviews?product_id=$PRODUCT_ID&page=1&page_size=20&filter=all" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $API_KEY"

The image filter is useful when you want reviews that show the item, for example to check that a product matches its listing photos. Reviews are written by people, so drop reviewer names and anything else that identifies them unless you have a reason and a lawful basis to keep it.

This Python loop pulls a fixed number of review pages for a list of products and saves each page as it arrives, so one failure doesn't lose the rest:

import json
import os
import requests

BASE = "https://api.perceptlayer.com/v1/aliexpress"
HEADERS = {"X-API-Key": os.environ["API_KEY"]}
PRODUCT_IDS = ["3256812408115438"]  # product_id values from search
PAGES = 3

spent = 0
for pid in PRODUCT_IDS:
    for page in range(1, PAGES + 1):
        r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/product-reviews", headers=HEADERS, timeout=60,
                         params={"product_id": pid, "page": page, "page_size": 20, "filter": "all"})
        if r.status_code != 200:
            print(pid, page, r.json()["error"]["code"])
            break
        spent += int(r.headers["X-Credits-Used"])
        with open(f"reviews-{pid}-{page}.json", "w") as f:
            json.dump(r.json(), f)
print("credits used:", spent)

We haven't run this loop live for this article, and the reviews response isn't recorded, so it saves pages as returned. The loop moves to the next product on the first error, and a failed call adds nothing to spent because it costs nothing. The errors docs list the codes you might see.

How do you check shipping to a country?

Call GET /v1/aliexpress/product-shipping with the product_id and the destination country. Shipping options and costs on AliExpress depend on where the buyer is, so a price comparison that ignores shipping compares the wrong numbers. One call returns the options for one product to one country.

curl "https://api.perceptlayer.com/v1/aliexpress/product-shipping?product_id=$PRODUCT_ID&country=US" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $API_KEY"

The country parameter is a string with no documented format beyond that, so confirm the code style the endpoint expects in the playground first. If you sell into several markets, multiply: 50 products checked for 4 countries is 200 calls.

What does a 100-product review pull cost?

Each endpoint is 1 credit per successful call, so the cost is the number of calls. Take 100 products from search results: the search pages to find them, 100 product calls, 3 pages of reviews each and one shipping check each to a single country. The recorded search returned page_size 60, so 100 products take 2 search pages.

That's 502 credits, inside the 1,000 free credits a month. Repeat it weekly to track new reviews and it's 502 × 4 = 2,008 credits a month, within the Starter pack's 10,000. To cut it, skip product for products you already have and fetch only page 1 of reviews on later runs. Failed calls cost nothing; the credits docs explain the balance, and pricing has what packs cost.

For comparing AliExpress prices with other marketplaces, the Walmart product search guide and the Google Shopping guide cover two more sources. To try this one, run a search in the playground on the AliExpress API page.

aliexpressecommerceproduct datareviewsshipping