Product Data API Evaluation Checklist
Choosing a product or pricing data API is hard to undo: your code, your costs and sometimes your customers’ trust end up depending on how the vendor counts coverage, how fresh its prices are and what happens when you outgrow the plan. This checklist turns that decision into a short list of questions you can put to every vendor in the same words, so the answers can be compared side by side instead of collected from marketing pages that each define things their own way.
Each row is one question: how the vendor counts retailers and products, how fresh each price is and how you can tell, how far back price history goes and how dense it is, which identifiers it accepts and how it shows that a match is right, its rate limits and status history, whether you can predict the bill, and what you commit to and how you leave. Each row says why the question matters, and there are blank columns for three vendors and your notes.
Every row also carries ShopSavvy’s own documented answer and a link where you can check it, written the same way we would want any other vendor to answer: limitations included. The answers come from the same source as our evaluation guide at shopsavvy.com/data/evaluate, so the file and the page always agree. Fill in the other vendors from their documentation, a trial or a sales call, and the gaps show up quickly.
Download the checklist (CSV)When to use it
- You are comparing two or more product data, barcode or price APIs before you commit.
- You need to write up a vendor decision for a manager, a security review or procurement.
- You are already on one vendor and want to check whether it still holds up against the alternatives.
How to use it
- Open the downloaded CSV in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
- Rename the Vendor A, B and C columns to the vendors you are comparing.
- Answer each question from each vendor’s documentation or a trial, and keep a link to where you found the answer.
- Treat any question a vendor cannot answer in writing as a no.
Read ShopSavvy’s answers with sources → · More free tools and templates