Apify
Product matching AI is an all-in-one tool that utilizes web scraping and machine learning to compare and match products from multiple e-com...
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What is Apify?
Product matching AI is an all-in-one product matching RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tool from Apify designed to monitor e-commerce websites by comparing and matching products across multiple online platforms. The tool combines web scraping with machine learning to automatically find matching pairs of products from different online shops, enabling businesses to perform dynamic pricing, competitor analysis, and market research efficiently.
Key features include real-time product matching with machine learning-based comparison, scalability that handles 1K to 1M product pairs without performance differences, and speed that allows mapping new categories within hours. The workflow consists of four steps: running scrapers (Amazon, Google Shopping, eBay, AliExpress, Shopify, Nike) to get data, choosing datasets to compare, letting AI process hundreds of potential product pairs per minute, and downloading matches in JSON, HTML, Excel, or other formats.
This tool is primarily for e-commerce businesses, pricing intelligence teams, market research analysts, and competition analysis professionals who need to track exact product matches across competitor websites, manage dynamic price changes efficiently, and build dashboards with automatically acquired retail data.
Apify pricing
Pricing model: Freemium
Product Matcher works on a price-per-result model with $10 per 1,000 checked product pairs. The total price consists of two aspects: scraping plus pairing. The scraping part depends on complexity and scale of data extraction. For the pairing part, you pay for pairs the AI has checked, meaning both matched and unmatched pairs are counted. Free plan includes enough free credits to try the Actor for new Apify accounts. Starter plan offers $49 in monthly usage credits for regular or scaled use. See Apify pricing for detailed plan breakdown.
Apify pros
- Handles 1K to 1M product pairs with no performance difference
- New categories mapped within a few hours, often by tomorrow
- AI trained on thousands of labeled product pairs for precision
- Consistent quality over time with minimal quality monitoring needed
- Schedule scraping and matching pipeline weekly, daily, or hourly
- Access to most recent product data through scraping
- 7+ years of web scraping market experience
- Extract and match data with the same provider
- No need to use Amazon API for Amazon data extraction
- Export data in JSON, XML, CSV, Excel, and HTML formats
- Available free credits on Free plan to try the Actor
- API access for programmatic data fetching
- Python and Node.js clients available for API access
- Affiliate program offers up to 30% recurring commission
- Custom scraper development available for specific use cases
Apify cons
- $10 per 1,000 checked product pairs can be expensive at scale
- Both matched and unmatched pairs count toward pricing
- Total price consists of scraping plus pairing costs
- Starter plan requires $49 monthly for regular use
- API access required to upload own datasets instead of scraping
- Manual mapping may be needed for sensitive use cases
- Around half of recall-focused results may be false matches
- Some scraper ratings are low (Nike scraper 185 uses, 3.3 AliExpress)
Frequently asked questions about Apify
What is Product matching AI and what does it do?
Product matching is technology designed for monitoring e-commerce websites by comparing and matching products across multiple platforms. AI Product Matcher is essentially AI for product matching able to do this task automatically. Scalability, speed, and precision it provides are crucial for market research, competition analysis, and automated pricing intelligence.
How much does Product Matcher cost?
Product Matcher works on a price-per-result model with $10 per 1,000 checked product pairs. The total price consists of two aspects: scraping plus pairing. The scraping part depends on the complexity and scale of your data extraction. For the pairing part, you pay for the pairs that the AI has checked, meaning both matched and unmatched pairs will be counted in.
Is there a free tier to try Product Matcher?
Yes. If you've just created your Apify account, your Free plan should have enough free credits to try the Actor. But if you want to run it regularly or on any kind of scale, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan such as Starter plan with $49 in monthly usage credits. See Apify pricing for the breakdown of which plans might suit you best.
What inputs does Product matching AI need?
It needs only two inputs: the dataset(s) to work with and specified attributes to work with. You can test this Actor even if you don't have the product pairs prepared or scraped yet - just run it with the default input. For more detail, follow the step-by-step tutorial.
Can I upload my own datasets instead of scraping?
Yes, you can upload your own datasets instead of scraping. You can also upload a single dataset containing pairs from both online shops. Either way, the product matching AI will go through your dataset and identify product pairs. However, this is possible only via an API. See Apify Documentation for a guide on how to get programmatic access to the Apify platform.
Can I export data via API?
Yes. There is an option for exporting your data via an API, be it whole datasets or just product pairs. You can have programmatic access to any tool on the platform - including this one - via Apify's web scraping API. You can access it either by using Python or Node.js clients, or manually. This API will enable you to fetch results directly from any of your datasets.
What if I need higher precision than AI can provide?
Some use cases are so sensitive to potential matching errors that you might not want to trust an algorithm with the task. However, even in this case, using the AI Product Matcher can help you achieve your goals faster and cheaper. You can run it in the recall-focused setting, meaning you want to get as many pairs as can be found, even though around half will be false. Afterwards, your human mappers can look at the results given by the algorithm and check the pre-selected pairs, allowing your team to work much quicker.
Does Apify have an affiliate program?
Yes. Our affiliate program offers up to 30% recurring commission for its participants. You can check out the terms & conditions and sign up for Apify Affiliate here.
Can Apify develop custom solutions for my project?
Yes. Feel free to contact our sales teams through this form to discuss the scope, timing and deliverables of your project. We'll develop tailor-made scrapers for your project and adjust the product matching AI to perform the best possible way for your use case.
Can I build my own scraper on the Apify platform?
Yes. If you haven't found scraper or automation tool that suits your needs in our Store, you can build one of your own on the Apify platform. Apify platform was created in mind for an easy hosting, running, scaling, scheduling and monitoring of web scrapers. Feel free to use any of our scraper templates to get you started in Python, JavaScript or TypeScript. Or our open-source web scraping and browser automation library Crawlee.