What Is a Retail API? 13 Best Examples

APIs, or application program interfaces, are increasingly popular tools for enhancing your website’s customer experience. An API allows a customer to interact with your website through an application created by your site’s developers or a third-party organization. 

Here’s some more information on what an API is that you may want to check out if you’re just getting started with this tool.

Retail business applications have their unique interfaces, known as retail APIs.

Let’s look at some examples of retail APIs, what they do, and why we like each one.

1. ASOS 

Asos is a British online retailer offering clothes, swimwear, and accessories. Its API is a direct pipeline to the company website. It can quickly query information about products, categories, countries, etc.

The API developer has a support team ready to answer any questions you may have about its API. Being such a widely-used tool, it’s likely that any problems you encounter have been discussed and addressed before.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $10/month; Ultra Plan, $30/month; Mega Plan, $300/month. 

Note: Each plan has a rate limit of 5 requests per second.

Pro-Tip: Asos is the most popular retail API offered by rapid API. This API has proven its quality and will leave you without any surprises.

2. Amazon-Price

Amazon is an online marketplace offering all products and services. This API provides unlimited access to real-time Amazon product prices, Prime detection, ratings, and the number of reviews.

With frequent updates based on user feedback, rest assured that this API has constant developer support.

Pricing: Basic Plan, 0/month; Pro Plan, $50/month; Ultra Plan, $200/month; Mega Plan, $450/month 

Pro-Tip: Amazon is the biggest online retailer globally, averaging almost four times as much monthly traffic as eBay. Access to the most powerful online retailer will add value to your business. However, this does come at a price, as this API is more expensive than all but one API on our list and relatively limited in terms of requests.

3. Google Cloud

Google’s Cloud retail API puts the power in the hands of its customers, allowing you to build your personalized recommendation systems. This API allows you to call upon any of Google’s Cloud APIs based on its client libraries. 

Here’s a complete list of APIs available to those with coding experience. There’s also Google’s API Explorer if you want to experiment with Google APIs without writing any code. Google also has support representatives ready to assist you with any questions you may have.

Pricing: Pricing available upon request.

Pro-Tip: We recommend this service for developers who don’t need any of the extra features that come with some of the other APIs. Google’s API is also useful if you’re looking for a price tailored just for you.

4. Axesso (Walmart Data Service)

This API by Axesso pulls data from Walmart’s product catalog and returns detailed Walmart product information including product title, manufacturer, reviews, price, and more.

Axesso also has a dedicated support team to help answer any and all questions you may have.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $7.50/month; Ultra Plan, $35/month; Mega Plan, $75/month. 

Pro-Tip: If you are a larger organization, note that the highest-priced option has a rate limit of 50 requests per minute. 

5. TaoBao

TaoBao is a Chinese online retail platform. It was the eighth-most visited website in 2021. This API features 99.9% uptime, 0.5s response time, is customizable, and easily scalable. Being updated frequently, this API has an active support team.

Pricing: Basic Plan, 0.10/month; Pro Plan, $20/month; Ultra Plan, $50/month; Mega Plan, $150/month 

Pro-Tip: This is the fastest responding API on our list that pulls information from a specific retail platform. If speed matters to your business, strongly consider TaoBao’s API.

6. H&M 

H&M is a Swedish clothing company located in Stockholm. With outlets across the world, H&M focuses on fashion for men, women, and children.

This API queries information about regions, categories, products and more from H&M’s official website. It features frequent developer support with the latest update to the API being last year.

Pricing: Basic Plan, 0/month; Pro Plan, $10/month; Ultra Plan, $30/month; Mega Plan, $300/month. 

Note: Each plan has a rate limit of 5 requests per second.

Pro-Tip: If your business operates on a multinational level, this API’s regional support endpoint will be especially important.

7. Etsy

From Etsy’s website: “Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods.” You will find handcrafted, vintage items made by both individuals and larger companies alike. Use this API to find active, interesting, trending, and current featured listings on Etsy.

This API has frequent developer support with the latest update being within the last year.

Pricing: Free

Pro-Tip: Because this API was produced by RapidAPI’s community, you may use it for free. This could be especially useful for growing organizations.

8. Zappos

Zappos is an online shoe and clothing retailer. This API queries information about brands, products, and categories. This is the best API for shoes, as it can query thousands of styles of shoes. Zappos also has a 365-day return policy on their products.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $10/month; Ultra Plan, $30/month; Mega Plan, $300/month. 

Note: Each plan has a rate limit of 5 requests per second.

Pro-Tip: This is the only API on our list that lets you sort by brands. This could be helpful for organizations that rely on brand loyalty for sales. This API also has frequent support, meaning you should have little trouble with implementation. 

9. Forever 21

Forever 21 is a clothing retailer located in Los Angeles, California. This API has a high popularity score along with a 100% service level, meaning you will have little trouble with implementation. 

If you are looking to query products from a proven fashion-forward company, the forever 21 API is your best bet.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $10/month; Ultra Plan, $30/month; Mega Plan, $300/month. 

Note: Each plan has a rate limit of 5 requests per second.

Pro-Tip: Like its name suggests, Forever 21 appeals to a younger demographic. We recommend this API for organizations looking to target that market.

10. Barcode Lookup

This API queries all information regarding products by using aforementioned bar codes or search terms. You can lookup product information and pricing by using UPC, EAN, ISBN codes or search terms.

This API has been updated within the last year and the maker responds to discussion posts.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $99/month; Ultra Plan, $249/month; Mega Plan, $499/month

Pro-Tip: Seeing as this API only has one function, it has the fastest response time on our list. If you regularly use scanning codes on your website, strongly consider Barcode Lookup’s API. Do note that this is the most expensive API on our list. 

11. Target

Target is a big-box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with locations across the United States. This API queries all information regarding products, categories, reviews, and location details.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free; Pro Plan, $19.99/month; Ultra Plan, $69.99/month; Mega Plan, $199.99/month. 

Pro-Tip: This is one of the most popular APIs on the RapidAPI platform. You also have instant access to the API developer, as well as news and announcements via telegram.

12. Rakuten

Rakuten is a Japanese ecommerce and online retailing platform based out of Tokyo. 

From RapidAPI, “The Rakuten Marketplace Ranking API can acquire data from the Ranking section within Rakuten Marketplace. Developers can acquire sales data divided by genre, gender, or age category.”

Pricing: Free 

Pro-Tip: This is one of the most unique APIs on our list. Rakuten’s marketplace ranking system gives you detailed data you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll have access to sales data divided into genre, gender, or age categories — for free.

13. eBay

eBay is a multinational ecommerce marketplace based in San Jose, California. As RapidAPI explains, use this API to “get the average price of recently sold eBay listings based on keywords and filters as well as individual listing information.”

eBay’s API is frequently updated with the developer being reachable through rapidAPI.

Pricing: Basic Plan, free,; Pro Plan, $12/month; Ultra Plan, $60/month; Mega Plan, $100/month. 

Note: The Basic Plan has a rate limit of 1 request per second. The Pro/Ultra/Mega plans have a rate limit of 5 requests per second.

Pro-Tip: eBay is the second biggest online retailer behind Amazon. At only $100/month for unlimited requests, this API gives you one of the best bang for your buck.

Implementing Retail API Strategy

Now that you are familiar with the best retail APIs, it’s time to use them on your own website. Use a retail API to experiment with marketing campaigns and get better data to market to customers more effectively. 

As a developer, using a retail API makes your job easier since you can reuse code to pull data. This means less work for you as you don’t have to write code for an API from scratch. Create applications and business models efficiently with the services offered by the retail APIs listed above.

All you need to do is figure out which API is best for your business and get started.