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Find 1688 product suppliers from photos with Apify and Google Sheets

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Created by: maksim || lazouski
maksim

Last update

Last update 6 hours ago

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Quick overview

This workflow runs manually or every Monday to read product image URLs from Google Sheets, uses Apify’s 1688 Image Search actor to find matching 1688.com listings, then appends top supplier matches to a Suppliers sheet and updates each product row with match stats and status.

How it works

  1. Runs on a manual trigger or on a weekly schedule (every Monday).
  2. Reads the Products tab in Google Sheets and keeps only rows that have an image_url and an empty status.
  3. Sends the collected image URLs to the Apify 1688 Image Search actor in a single run, enforcing a per-run USD cost limit.
  4. Stops with an error if the Apify run does not finish with a SUCCEEDED status.
  5. Retrieves the actor’s dataset results from Apify, keeps the top ranked non-ad matches per image, and appends them as rows to the Suppliers tab in Google Sheets.
  6. Reads Apify’s FAILED record for images with no results and updates the Products tab with status, match count, price stats (lowest and median USD), and the best-match URL for each processed image.

Setup

  1. Install the verified Apify community node (@apify/n8n-nodes-apify) and add an Apify API token credential using “setup manually.” Don't use "Connect to Apify" (OAuth): the node that reads the run's FAILED record works only with a token.
  2. Create a Google Sheet with a Products tab containing product, image_url, and status columns, plus an empty Suppliers tab.
  3. Add Google Sheets credentials, then paste your spreadsheet URL into the workflow’s spreadsheetUrl setting.
  4. Optionally adjust settings such as pagesPerPhoto, keepTopMatches, skipAds, translateTitles, maxPhotosPerRun, and maxCostPerRunUsd before activating the schedule.

Requirements

  • An Apify account and API token (Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month)
  • A Google account with Google Sheets
  • The verified Apify node @apify/n8n-nodes-apify (tested with 0.9.0 on n8n 2.46)

Customization

  • Raise pagesPerPhoto (up to 10) to get up to 600 matches per photo
  • Turn on translateTitles for English titles ($1 per 1,000 matches, charged on every match of a page)
  • Lower maxCostPerRunUsd to cap what one run can spend; photos it does not reach are searched next time

Additional info

Cost on Apify's free plan: $0.004 per photo with its first 60 matches, $0.002 per further page of 60, and $0.005 per run (less on paid plans). A photo that cannot be read or that nothing on 1688 looks like is not charged; its product gets the status "nothing found" with the reason.