Kroger categories API

Endpoint facts

Method

GET

API path

/kroger/categories

Auth

apiKey

Credits

3 credits/request

Platform

Kroger

Response schema

#/definitions/kroger.categoriesResponseDoc

Overview

Returns Kroger's full product-browse category taxonomy: every slug/category_id pair kroger-search and kroger-category accept, each with its department and full breadcrumb. This is how to discover valid slug/category_id values -- previously the only way was to already have one from a search response's facet group. Sourced from Kroger's own site navigation menu; covers every category a shopper can browse to from Kroger's site menu (321 at time of writing across 7 departments). Takes no parameters. Developers commonly use this endpoint for data enrichment, monitoring, research dashboards, internal automation, and agent-native workflows that need repeatable structured public web data. Authentication uses the documented Crawlora headers, and usage is metered with the credit cost shown on this page.

Authentication

Send your scraping API key in the x-api-key header. Use the console API Keys page to rotate or select the active key.

Billing

Endpoint usage is metered in credits. The plan prices, included credits, limits, and overage rates below match the active backend billing configuration.

Credit cost

3 credits/request

Charged response

Successful 2xx responses

Infrastructure behavior

This endpoint is executed through Crawlora's managed scraping infrastructure.

• Proxy strategy: managed automatically where needed
• Browser rendering: enabled for supported targets that require rendered HTML or JavaScript execution
• Browser cluster: supported dynamic workloads can be routed through distributed browser instances
• Retry behavior: automatic retry/fallback may be used depending on endpoint type
• Challenge handling: challenged pages or unusable upstream HTML are detected and surfaced clearly when they cannot be used
• Billing: credits are charged only for successful 2xx responses
• Observability: responses include request context where available

Browser cluster behavior

Some targets require real browser execution because the data is loaded through JavaScript, dynamic rendering, or interaction-like browser behavior.

For supported endpoints, Crawlora can route requests through a managed browser cluster. This allows Crawlora to execute JavaScript, load dynamic content, apply browser-level request behavior, and normalize the rendered result into JSON.

You do not need to operate your own Playwright, Puppeteer, Chrome, proxy, queue, or retry infrastructure.

Response behavior

- `categories[]` is a flat list — every leaf category a shopper can browse to from Kroger's own site menu. 321 entries across 7 departments (Fresh, Grocery, Beer/Wine/Liquor, Health/Beauty/Baby, Cleaning/Household, Home/Electronics/Toys, Pet) at time of writing. - Each entry's `category_id` and `slug` are directly usable as `kroger-category`'s own `category_id` and `slug` query parameters. - `department` is a convenience field equal to `breadcrumb[0]`. - `breadcrumb` is the full department > aisle > category path. Kroger's own menu sometimes repeats a level's name at the next level down (e.g. "Fresh Fruit & Vegetables" as both an aisle group and its own sole subgroup); that repetition is collapsed so the breadcrumb reads cleanly without losing a real hierarchy level. - `departments` lists the top-level departments that contributed at least one category, in Kroger's own menu order. Kroger's site menu carries 12 top-level entries in total; the other 5 ("Popular", "Seasonal Favorites", "Our Brands", "Gift Cards", "Explore More") are marketing shortcuts with no category-browse links and are correctly excluded rather than padding the list with unusable entries. - The same `category_id` can legitimately appear more than once, cross-listed under different departments with a different display `slug` (e.g. Kroger's own menu lists id `05017` as both "Bacon & Breakfast Sausage" under Fresh > Meat and under Grocery > Breakfast). Both entries are kept — neither is a duplicate to collapse away. - **Known gap, not silently covered up**: Kroger's search API accepts `category_id` values coarser than any entry returned here — the originally-shipped `kroger-category` example (`slug=pet`, `category_id=27`, sourced from a product page's breadcrumb) is a top-level department id, one level up from every leaf id this endpoint enumerates (Kroger's own menu links to a `/d/pet-supplies` landing page for "Shop All Pet" instead of a `/pl/` category id). That coarser department-id space is not independently enumerated by any credential-free source found so far; see `notes/kroger-maintenance.md`'s 2026-09-15 entry for the full investigation. Every `slug`/`category_id` pair this endpoint does return is confirmed to work with `kroger-category`. Example response: ```json { "code": 200, "msg": "OK", "data": { "count": 321, "departments": ["Fresh", "Grocery", "Beer, Wine & Liquor", "Health, Beauty & Baby", "Cleaning & Household", "Home, Electronics & Toys", "Pet"], "categories": [ { "category_id": "06111", "slug": "fresh-fruit", "name": "Fresh Fruit", "department": "Fresh", "breadcrumb": ["Fresh", "Fresh Fruit & Vegetables", "Fresh Fruit"], "url": "https://www.kroger.com/pl/fresh-fruit/06111" } ], "source_url": "https://www.kroger.com/atlas/v1/dynamic-experience/v1/amp-experiences/navigation/1.0.0/site-menu-v2" } } ```

Error behavior

Crawlora does not silently return bad data when the upstream page cannot be used.

When possible, Crawlora returns structured error context so your integration can retry, back off, or inspect the request.

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