Ulta Beauty Categories API

Endpoint facts

Method

GET

API path

/ulta/categories

Auth

apiKey

Credits

3 credits/request

Platform

Ulta Beauty

Response schema

#/definitions/ulta.categoriesResponseDoc

Overview

Lists Ulta Beauty's own storefront category navigation: department, group, name, and a URL usable directly as GET /ulta/category's own category parameter. Closes the discovery gap of not already knowing a category path. department, if set, filters to just that department's entries. group is empty for a department's own top-level link or a group's own heading link, and set to that group's name for the leaf categories nested under it. The exact same real category can legitimately appear more than once under a different department/group when the site's own navigation cross-lists it. 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

Response behavior

- `group` is empty for two kinds of entries: a department's own top-level link (e.g. "All Makeup & Nails"), and a group's own heading link (e.g. "Face"), which is itself a real, browsable category one level above its own leaf items. Every leaf item nested under a group carries that group's name as `group` (e.g. "Foundation" carries group `"Face"`). - `department`/`group` reflect the site's own navigation grouping, not a slug derived from the returned URL's path. Some categories are cross-listed by Ulta's own navigation under more than one department -- for example "Tinted Moisturizer" and "Makeup Remover" appear under the Makeup & Nails department's "Face" group, but their URLs resolve under `shop/skin-care/...`, and the same two categories also appear separately under the Skin Care department's own "Moisturizers"/"Cleansers" groups. This is expected: the same real category can legitimately appear more than once with a different `department`/`group` pairing. - A small number of groups have a heading link but no nested leaf items at all (for example Men's Care's "Cologne") and surface as a single group-empty entry, the same shape as a department's own top-level link. Example response: ```json {"code":200,"msg":"OK","data":{"source_url":"https://www.ulta.com/","fetched_at":"2026-08-11T12:00:00Z","categories":[{"department":"makeup-nails","name":"All Makeup & Nails","url":"https://www.ulta.com/shop/makeup"},{"department":"makeup-nails","name":"Eyes","url":"https://www.ulta.com/shop/makeup/eyes"},{"department":"makeup-nails","group":"Eyes","name":"Mascara","url":"https://www.ulta.com/shop/makeup/eyes/mascara"},{"department":"makeup-nails","group":"Face","name":"Tinted Moisturizer","url":"https://www.ulta.com/shop/skin-care/moisturizers/tinted-moisturizer"}]}} ```

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.

Related