Amazon best sellers by category API

Amazon sellers and merchandising teams routinely need the bestseller list inside one vertical: top movers in Electronics, not the blended global chart. Amazon's official APIs do not expose that page as a documented JSON endpoint. Teams either scrape HTML (fragile when Amazon changes markup) or manually export from Seller Central reports that lag by days.

Trends MCP documents Amazon Best Sellers by Category as a top_trends feed with an optional category field. One POST call returns ranked products for the selected vertical.

Endpoint

POST https://api.trendsmcp.ai/api
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json

Get bestsellers for a category

{
  "mode": "top_trends",
  "type": "Amazon Best Sellers by Category",
  "category": "Electronics",
  "limit": 25
}

The feed label is case-sensitive. Use exactly Amazon Best Sellers by Category as listed on data sources.

Response shape:

{
  "as_of_ts": "2026-06-24T06:15:00Z",
  "type": "Amazon Best Sellers by Category",
  "category": "Electronics",
  "limit": 25,
  "count": 25,
  "data": [
    [1, "Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)"],
    [2, "Fire TV Stick 4K Max streaming device"],
    [3, "Anker Portable Charger Power Bank"]
  ]
}

Each row in data is a [rank, product_title] pair. Set limit up to 200. Use offset for pagination when pulling deeper ranks.

Category values that commonly work

Amazon's merchandising taxonomy shifts seasonally, but these category strings return data reliably in production workflows:

If a niche subcategory returns zero rows, widen to the parent category or fall back to Amazon Best Sellers Top Rated for the global chart.

Cross-category comparison in one session

Merchandisers often compare two verticals after a retail event (Prime Day, Black Friday). Two sequential calls, two request credits:

{"mode": "top_trends", "type": "Amazon Best Sellers by Category", "category": "Electronics", "limit": 10}

{"mode": "top_trends", "type": "Amazon Best Sellers by Category", "category": "Home & Kitchen", "limit": 10}

Store as_of_ts on each response so dashboards can align snapshots taken minutes apart.

Code examples

Python

import requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/api",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={
        "mode": "top_trends",
        "type": "Amazon Best Sellers by Category",
        "category": "Electronics",
        "limit": 25,
    },
)
res.raise_for_status()
chart = res.json()
for rank, title in chart["data"]:
    print(f"{rank}. {title}")

JavaScript

const res = await fetch("https://api.trendsmcp.ai/api", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    mode: "top_trends",
    type: "Amazon Best Sellers by Category",
    category: "Electronics",
    limit: 25,
  }),
});
const chart = await res.json();

curl

curl -s https://api.trendsmcp.ai/api \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"top_trends","type":"Amazon Best Sellers by Category","category":"Electronics","limit":10}'

MCP usage in Cursor or Claude

Connect Trends MCP per the Cursor setup guide, then prompt:

Using TrendsMCP, show me the top 15 Amazon best sellers in the Home & Kitchen category right now.

The assistant routes to get_top_trends with the correct feed label and category filter.

Pair with Amazon keyword demand curves

The category chart shows what is winning shelf rank today. It does not show whether demand for a product name has been building for six months. For that, call the historical endpoint on the same API key:

{
  "source": "amazon",
  "keyword": "air fryer",
  "percent_growth": ["3M", "1Y"]
}

The Amazon Trends API page documents keyword formatting and growth presets.

A practical FBA workflow: pull the category top 25 weekly, diff ranks against the prior snapshot, then run get_growth only on products that entered the top 10 or jumped five positions. That keeps request spend low on the free tier.

Request counting and free tier

Each top_trends call counts as one request against the monthly plan allocation. The free tier includes 100 requests per month with no credit card.

A weekly five-category digest plus ten follow-up get_growth calls on movers fits comfortably under the Starter plan (1,000 requests/month at $19).

Error handling

Error bodies follow {"error": "code", "message": "..."}. Log as_of_ts on successful responses so downstream jobs can mark stale data when a poll fails.

Who uses this feed

FBA private-label sellers watch whether generic listings in their niche get displaced after a viral TikTok product surfaces on the category chart. Rank movement often precedes ad CPC spikes by several days.

Retail media analysts treat category bestseller shifts as a coarse demand proxy when Amazon does not share category-level search volume publicly. Pair with Google Shopping trends via get_growth when the question is whether demand is Amazon-specific or cross-retail.

E-commerce agencies export weekly category charts into client Slack channels. JSON snapshots timestamped with as_of_ts replace screenshot threads that disagree about when the data was captured.

None of these workflows require scraping Amazon HTML or negotiating Product Advertising API rate limits for chart data that PA-API was never designed to return.