Is there a Google Shopping API? Content API, Merchant API and Shopping data APIs explained

Search for “Google Shopping API” and you will find two very different things under the same name. Google’s own APIs, the Content API for Shopping and its replacement the Merchant API, are for merchants managing their own products in Merchant Center. If you want to search Google Shopping and read prices across sellers, those APIs will not do it. That is the job of third-party Shopping data APIs.

This explainer sorts out which is which, what changed in 2026, and what each one returns. Facts about Google’s APIs are as of October 2026 and linked to Google’s documentation.

Three things people mean by “Google Shopping API”

1. The Content API for Shopping. Google’s long-standing API for uploading and managing products in a Merchant Center account. It has been sunset.
2. The Merchant API. Google’s replacement for the Content API. Same purpose: your own account, your own products.
3. A Google Shopping data API (sometimes called a Shopping scraper or SERP API). A third-party service that runs a search on Google Shopping and returns the results, or returns every seller offering a given product, as JSON.

The first two write and read data you own. The third reads what any shopper can see.

The Content API for Shopping: sunset in 2026

Google’s sunset page gives the timeline, as of October 2026:

Projects can request an extension, but Google says extensions “don’t extend past final decommissioning in early 2027.” The instruction is to migrate existing integrations to the Merchant API.

If you run a feed integration, a Shopify-to-Merchant-Center sync you built yourself, or an internal tool that edits product data, this deadline is yours. If you only wanted to read Shopping prices, the Content API was never the right tool, and its sunset does not change that.

The Merchant API: what it does

Google’s Merchant API overview calls it “a redesign of the Content API for Shopping” and lists uses such as automated account, product, inventory and report management for Merchant Center. In practice that means:

• Managing your products and the data sources they come from.
• Managing inventory.
• Managing your Merchant Center accounts.
• Reports on performance and market insights for your own products.
• Real-time notifications when your product data changes.

All of it is scoped to Merchant Center accounts you have access to. You authenticate as the merchant, and the data is your catalog and your performance.

The closest it gets to competitor prices

The Merchant API’s Reports sub-API includes a price competitiveness report. Google’s reference describes its benchmark_price field as the “latest available price benchmark for the product’s catalog in the benchmark country.” Google’s BigQuery schema for the same data defines it as the “average click-weighted price for a given product across all merchants who advertise that same product on Shopping ads.”

That is useful, and free if you are already in Merchant Center. But note what it is:

• One number per product, not a list of sellers.
• Only for products in your own catalog.
• An average of advertisers, weighted by clicks, so it does not tell you who is cheapest or by how much.

If you need to know that a specific retailer dropped below your price today, the benchmark will not tell you.

What Google does not offer

As of October 2026, we could not find an official Google API that does either of these:

• Run a Google Shopping search for any query and return the products, prices and merchants on the page.
• Return every seller offering a product, with price, shipping and total, for a product you do not sell.

Google’s Shopping developer APIs are built around Merchant Center accounts, and Google’s general web search API, the Custom Search JSON API, is itself closing (see Custom Search API alternatives). This gap is why Shopping data APIs exist.

Shopping data APIs: what they do

A Shopping data API fetches Google Shopping pages for you and returns structured JSON. You do not need a Merchant Center account, and you do not need to run browsers or proxies. Providers differ in coverage and pricing; our comparison of Google Shopping APIs covers ten of them.

On CrawlerData there are three Shopping endpoints:

• Google Shopping API (google-shopping-search): a Shopping search, with position, product ID, title, price, old price, merchant, rating and reviews for each result.
• Google Shopping Sellers API (google-shopping-product): every seller for one product, sorted by total price, in one request.
• Google Shopping Product API (google-shopping-product-info): title, brand, description, images, rating and specs.

Merchant API vs a Shopping data API

Many teams use both: the Merchant API to keep their feed correct, and a data API to see the market around it.

Two calls: search, then sellers

Here is the data API side with real output. Every request is a POST to https://api.crawlerdata.com/v1/jobs with a bearer token and a JSON body. We ran these on 13 October 2026.

1. Search Google Shopping. 1 credit.

curl -s https://api.crawlerdata.com/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRAWLERDATA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "endpoint": "google-shopping-search",
    "params": { "query": "ninja af101 air fryer", "country": "us" },
    "queue": "live"
  }'

The response took about 4.5 seconds and held 27 results. The first two, trimmed:

{
  "job": { "status": "completed", "credits": 1 },
  "result": {
    "shopping_results": [
      {
        "position": 1,
        "product_id": "13236607309793982184",
        "title": "Ninja Air Fryer",
        "price": { "value": 119.99, "currency": "USD", "raw": "$119.99" },
        "merchant": "Best Buy",
        "rating": 4.8,
        "reviews": 7800
      },
      {
        "position": 2,
        "product_id": "3695668166803845533",
        "title": "Ninja AF101 Air Fryer",
        "price": { "value": 99.2, "currency": "USD", "raw": "$99.20" },
        "merchant": "Walmart - DealCity, LLC",
        "rating": null,
        "reviews": null
      }
    ]
  }
}

The price and merchant on a search result are one offer, the one Google put on the card. To see the others you need the sellers endpoint and the product_id. Results 3 to 8 were other Ninja models, which is normal for a Shopping search: check titles before you pick an ID. Our post on Google Shopping product IDs goes into this.

2. Get every seller for the product. 1 credit per 10 sellers returned, rounded up.

curl -s https://api.crawlerdata.com/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRAWLERDATA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "endpoint": "google-shopping-product",
    "params": { "product_id": "13236607309793982184", "country": "us" },
    "queue": "live"
  }'

This one loads the full product page and collects every seller on it. It returned 19 sellers and cost 2 credits. Two of them, trimmed:

{
  "sellers_count": 19,
  "sellers": [
    {
      "position": 4,
      "merchant": "Walmart - Seller",
      "offer_title": "Ninja Af101 Air Fryer with 4-Quart Ceramic Coated Basket, Black/Grey, …",
      "price": { "value": 95.99, "currency": "USD", "raw": "95.99 USD" },
      "shipping": { "value": 0, "currency": "USD", "raw": "0.00 USD" },
      "total_price": { "value": 95.99, "currency": "USD", "raw": "95.99 USD" },
      "availability": "In Stock"
    },
    {
      "position": 9,
      "merchant": "Best Buy",
      "offer_title": "Ninja - Air Fryer - Black/Gray",
      "price": { "value": 119.99, "currency": "USD", "raw": "119.99 USD" },
      "shipping": { "value": 0, "currency": "USD", "raw": "0.00 USD" },
      "total_price": { "value": 119.99, "currency": "USD", "raw": "119.99 USD" },
      "availability": "In Stock"
    }
  ]
}

Sellers come back sorted by total_price, from $76.00 (an eBay seller, $60 plus $16 shipping) to $152.89. Nine of the 19 listed an item price of $119.99. That spread is exactly what a single benchmark number cannot show you. For what each seller field means, including when shipping is null, see how Google Shopping sellers and offers work.

Which one do you need?

• You sell on Google and need to update products, prices or inventory. Merchant API. If you are still on the Content API, migrate now: requests are already failing intermittently without an extension.
• You sell on Google and want a rough sense of whether you are priced above the market. The Merchant API’s price competitiveness report, in Merchant Center or through the API.
• You need each competitor’s price for your products, or Shopping results for keywords. A Shopping data API. See competitor price monitoring for the usual setup.
• You are a brand checking resellers against a minimum advertised price. A data API too, because resellers’ offers are not in your Merchant Center. See MAP monitoring.
• You are building market research or product data enrichment. A data API: market research and catalog enrichment.

Cost of the data API side

Shopping search is 1 credit per request. The sellers request returns every seller in one call and costs 1 credit per 10 sellers returned, rounded up, minimum 1. Packs run from $50 for 50,000 credits ($1.00 per 1,000) to $3,750 for 12.5 million ($0.30 per 1,000), credits are valid for 6 months, and failed jobs are not charged.

For the air fryer above: 1 credit to find the ID once, then 2 credits per check while it has 11 to 20 sellers. Checking 500 products like it once a day for 30 days is 500 + (500 × 2 × 30) = 30,500 credits, which fits in one $50 Starter pack. The pricing page has the other packs, and Google Shopping API pricing compared puts these numbers next to other providers’.

Running it in production

• Find each product_id once. Store it with your SKU and reuse it for every check.
• Run batches on the fast or regular queue. Collect results by polling or a webhook (postbackUrl); every queue costs the same as live.
• Key each offer on merchant and offer_title when you store price history.
• Check each market separately. country takes one of 31 two-letter codes, such as us, gb or de.

Try it

New accounts get 50 free credits, valid 30 days, after verifying a work email. That is enough to run your own products through a search and a sellers request several times. Start on the Google Shopping API page, or go straight to the Sellers API.