Silkline DataReading Taobao Data: Prices, Discounts, Sales Counts and Ratings
What Taobao and Tmall price, discount, sales and seller fields really mean, why sales are ranges like 1万+, and how to compare listings, with real records from November 2026.
Published 2026-11-10 by Silkline Data
Short answer: Taobao shows sales as rounded ranges such as 1000+ or 10万+ (100,000+), not exact counts, and the price you see can be a promotion price. Treat the sales number as a floor, compare discountPrice rather than price, and use the three seller ratings to separate solid shops from the rest.
What does a Taobao product record contain?
A keyword search for 连衣裙 (dresses) between ¥100 and ¥300 on 9 November 2026 returned 10 products with 27 fields each in 7 seconds. The fields that matter most:
| Field | Example from that run | What it means |
|---|---|---|
title |
锦绒绣花 秋冬连衣裙旗袍… | The listing title, in Chinese, packed with search keywords |
price |
399 | List price in yuan |
discountPrice |
399 | Price after the promotion shown on the listing |
discountType |
优惠价 | Label of that promotion |
salesText |
少于100 | Sales exactly as Taobao shows them |
salesCount |
100 | salesText as a number |
isTmall |
true | Sold in Tmall, the brand-store side of Taobao |
descriptionRating, serviceRating, shippingRating |
4.78, 4.8, 4.84 | The shop's three scores out of 5 |
itemLocation |
浙江 杭州 | Where the item ships from |
stock |
11 | Units in stock |
How should you read sales counts?
Taobao rounds what it shows, and the format changes with the size of the number:
salesText |
Meaning | salesCount |
|---|---|---|
| 少于100 | fewer than 100 buyers | 100, an upper bound here, not a count |
| 11人付款 | 11 people paid | 11 |
| 1000+ | 1,000 or more | 1000 |
| 1万+ | 10,000 or more | 10000 |
| 10万+ | 100,000 or more | 100000 |
So a product at 10万+ may have sold 100,000 or 900,000. For ranking listings that is fine. For market sizing, do not add these numbers up as if they were exact.
Price or discount price?
Use discountPrice when you compare what buyers actually pay. In a run of shop listings, a screen protector was listed at ¥105.88 with a discountPrice of ¥52.94 under the label 品牌巨惠 (brand deal): half the list price. Promotions change daily and spike around 618 (June) and Double 11 (November), so record the date with every price you collect.
How to judge a seller
- Tmall or not.
isTmalltrue means a registered brand or authorised store. - Flagship. Shop names ending in 旗舰店 are a brand's official store.
- The three ratings. Description, service and shipping, each out of 5. Compare shops within one category; in our runs they ranged from 4.78 to 4.92.
- Seller level and positive rate add a longer view of the shop's history.
What do reviews tell you?
A review run for one phone case returned 10 reviews with 20 fields each in 7 seconds: the text, a 1 to 5 score, the product variant bought (sku, for example the phone model and colour), photos and any follow-up review written days later. Taobao anonymises most reviewers itself (扬***7), and we mask what remains.
What does it cost?
Each product costs $0.008 and each review $0.0045, plus a $0.03 start fee per run. 500 products cost about $4. There is no subscription, and free Apify users get two trial runs. See the Taobao API for every request type.