Getting started

Chocodata is one scraping API for the whole web: a single REST request returns structured JSON from 235 sites and 453 endpoints. You will have a working scrape in under 2 minutes.

1. Create an API key

1. Sign in at app.chocodata.com (Google sign-in or email, no card required for the free tier).
2. Open API keys in the left sidebar.
3. Click Create key, name it (for example local-dev), and copy the value. It is only shown once.

Your key looks like cd_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Treat it like a password. The free tier gives you 1,000 requests a month to try everything below.

2. The one request shape

Every endpoint follows the same pattern. You change the site and the resource; everything else stays the same:

GET https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/{site}/{resource}?api_key=YOUR_KEY

{site} is the target (walmart, ebay, google, indeed, …), {resource} is what you want from it (product, search, job, …), and api_key is your key as a query parameter. That is the only authentication you need.

3. Your first request - cURL

Let’s pull a product from Walmart:

curl "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/walmart/product?api_key=YOUR_KEY&query=5085206428"

You get back clean JSON:

{
  "id": "5085206428",
  "title": "LEGEND COOKWARE 5-Ply Stainless Steel Cookware Set",
  "price": 299.99,
  "currency": "USD",
  "rating": 4.7,
  "reviews_count": 2481,
  "images": ["https://cdn.example.com/images/cookware-set-71..."],
  "brand": "LEGEND COOKWARE",
  "category": [],
  "offers": []
}

The exact same pattern works for any of the 235 sites and 453 endpoints:

# Keyword search on a search engine
curl "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/google/search?api_key=YOUR_KEY&query=wireless+headphones"

# A marketplace search
curl "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/ebay/search?api_key=YOUR_KEY&query=mechanical+keyboard"

# A single job posting
curl "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/indeed/job?api_key=YOUR_KEY&query=https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=abc123"

Average response time: ~2.6 s median, ~6 s p95.

4. The same call in Python

import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/walmart/product",
    params={"api_key": "cd_live_YOUR_KEY", "query": "5085206428"},
)
r.raise_for_status()
product = r.json()
print(product["title"], "-", product["price"], product["currency"])

5. The same call in Node.js

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/walmart/product?query=5085206428&api_key=cd_live_YOUR_KEY"
);
const product = await res.json();
console.log(product.title, "-", product.price, product.currency);

Prefer a typed client? We publish official SDKs for Node, Python, Go, a CLI, and an MCP server.

What about sites without a dedicated endpoint?

There are two surfaces:

• Dedicated endpoints return clean, validated JSON for a supported site and page type (the call above). Browse all of them in the scraper directory.
• The Universal Web Scraper API fetches any other URL and returns JSON, HTML, or text.

# Scrape any URL the directory does not cover yet
curl "https://api.chocodata.com/api/v1/universal/get?api_key=YOUR_KEY&url=https://example.com&parse=auto"

Core concepts explains how to choose between the two.

What costs a credit?

Only successful (HTTP 2xx) responses. Errors, target-site challenge pages, timeouts, and 404s never touch your balance. One request costs 5 credits; plans are sized in requests. See Billing and pricing for the full policy.

Common errors

HTTP	Body contains	What it means	What to do
400	invalid_params	Query or domain malformed	Check your query value and that domain (if used) is supported for the target
401	unauthorized	API key missing or wrong	Verify your ?api_key= value
429	rate_limited	Too many requests from your key	Back off and respect Retry-After
404	not_found	The item is delisted, malformed, or does not exist on this site	No retry; drop the item or try a different region
502	target_unreachable / extraction_failed	The target blocked us on all retries, or served a page we could not parse	Retry in ~30 s; usually transient

Full list with retry semantics: Error codes.

Where to go next

• Core concepts - how the API works, dedicated vs Universal, credits.
• Endpoint reference - resource types and how to find any endpoint.
• Product endpoint and Search endpoint - the two canonical patterns.
• Scraper directory - browse all 453 endpoints.
• Country + content language - regional storefronts and languages.