Frequently asked questions
Answers to common questions about ShopSniffer — what it does, how it works, pricing, rate limits, and supported stores.
Overview
Quick answers to the questions we get most often. For a deeper dive on any topic, follow the links in the answers or check the API reference and guides.
Any public Shopify store with an accessible sitemap. This covers the vast majority of live Shopify stores. Stores that have disabled their sitemap or are password-protected cannot be analyzed — you'll get a 400 Invalid domain response when trying to create a job.
Most reports complete within a few minutes. Stores with thousands of products may take longer. You can track real-time progress via the WebSocket endpoint at /api/ws/:jobId, or poll GET /api/jobs/:id/status.
Yes. The CSV follows Shopify's exact product import format, including all required columns for handles, variants, images, and SEO fields. You can import it directly via Shopify Admin → Products → Import.
Yes. Every report includes JSON exports for all collections and pages, in addition to the product CSV and JSON. These are available for download once the report completes. See downloads.
We load the store's homepage in a headless Cloudflare Browser Rendering session and analyze all loaded scripts, stylesheets, and DOM elements against a database of known Shopify app patterns. This identifies review apps, email tools, analytics, chat widgets, and more. See app & theme detection.
Credit cards via Stripe (requires an account) and any cryptocurrency token on any supported chain via AnySpend (no account required). For programmatic access, API keys are pre-paid and x402 is per-request with USDC on Base. See buying a report and pricing.
x402 is an open payment protocol that uses HTTP 402 status codes for machine-to-machine payments. It allows AI agents and scripts to pay for API access with stablecoins (USDC) on blockchain networks like Base, without needing accounts or API keys. See x402 payment and the x402 tutorial.
Track a store from your dashboard or via the API. ShopSniffer automatically runs a full scan daily at 12:00 UTC (configurable to daily, weekly, or biweekly per store via PATCH /api/store-detail/:slug/frequency) and detects changes: new products, removed products, price changes, and content updates. See monitoring and monitoring workflows.
- Chat API (authenticated): 10 requests per minute, 200,000 tokens per day per user.
- Chat API (anonymous): 3 requests per minute, 20,000 tokens per day per IP.
- Free export: rate-limited at the Cloudflare edge per IP; sustained abuse is blocked.
- All other authenticated endpoints: no hard per-user limit today; we reserve the right to throttle abusive traffic.
See rate limits for details and 429 response shapes.
Products are available as Shopify-compatible CSV and raw JSON. Collections and pages are available as JSON. Screenshots are PNG. All files can be downloaded via the website or the GET /api/downloads endpoint. See downloads.
Yes. Exporting a competitor's full product catalog, pricing strategy, vendor mix, installed apps, and theme is the most common use case. Set up monitoring to track changes over time. Start with the export a competitor guide.
Yes. The full OpenAPI 3.1 specification is served at /api/openapi.json. Use it for automated client generation or to power tools like Postman and Insomnia. AI agents should also read /.well-known/agents.json for capability discovery.
Jobs you create while signed in (or via API key) are owned by your user ID. Public job IDs can be viewed by anyone with the URL. Reports older than 30 days may be auto-published as SEO content on the public store directory — if this matters to you, delete the report before it ages out.