Shortlist Chinese factories by minimum order and tiered price
Search 1688 wholesale by keyword and get tiered CNY prices, minimum order, sales, repurchase rate and supplier location as JSON, to shortlist factories.
You want a product made in China, and the best prices are on 1688, the domestic wholesale market, where the factory and the minimum order are visible and the price drops by quantity. The pages are in Chinese and a manual search per keyword takes hours. Lovely Router runs the searches for you. Send keywords and filters, get one JSON object per product, pay per product from a prepaid balance. Call it from a script, a sourcing sheet or an AI agent with one API key.
Hand it to your AI agent
Copy this prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or any coding agent. It tells the agent where the docs are and how to use your API key.
Shortlist Chinese factories by minimum order and tiered price. Use the Lovely Router data tools: each returns JSON and is billed per result.
- Docs (read first): https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/find.md and https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/run.md
- Plan first: POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/suggest with `{"task": "<my task in plain words>"}` (free). It returns the tools to run in order, each with an example `input`, the `input_required` fields, an estimated cost and a ready-made `run` request. Replace the example values with my task's; if a field is unclear, read the tool with GET https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/<id>. To browse instead, POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/discover searches the catalog.
- Show me the plan and its estimated cost (`total_est_cost_usd`) before running anything large.
- Run: POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/<id>/run with `{"input": {...}, "max_results": N}`. A 200 has the finished run with `items`; a 202 means it is still running, so poll the `poll` path until `status` is `succeeded`, `failed`, `timed_out` or `stopped`.
- Only delivered results are billed. Keep max_results small on the first run, check the output, then scale up.
- If you support MCP, connect https://lovelyrouter.com/mcp instead (Streamable HTTP, same key; https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/mcp.md) and use suggest_tools, get_tool and run_tool.
- Auth: read my API key from the LOVELY_API_KEY environment variable and send it as `Authorization: Bearer $LOVELY_API_KEY`. Never print or commit the key. If it is not set, ask me to create one at https://lovelyrouter.com/app/keys.
- Billing is prepaid: every call is charged to my balance, so test with a small request before running anything large.
- Every docs page is plain Markdown; the full index is https://lovelyrouter.com/llms.txt.
My task: <the inputs (links, keywords or accounts) and how many results you need>How it works
Write the search
List keywords in English or Chinese, then set the filters that match your order: price range, minimum order, supplier province, merchant type.
Run the tool with a cap
Send them to
POST /v1/tools/1688-products/runwithmaxResultsin the input andmax_resultson the request. The run holds its maximum cost from your balance and returns the products as JSON.Shortlist and compare
Sort by tiered price at your quantity, by sales and by repurchase rate, then contact the top suppliers.
Search 1688 for suppliers with one request
Search 1688 wholesale products takes keywords, one search per entry. maxResults caps the number of products, up to 500 per run:
curl https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/1688-products/run \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $LOVELY_API_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{
"input": {
"keywords": [
"phone case"
],
"maxResults": 5
},
"max_results": 5
}'Narrow it with priceMin, priceMax, minOrderQuantity, merchantType (any, superFactory or verifiedMerchant), province, city or sortBy. If you already have product ids, pass them in offerIds instead. A run still going after 60 seconds returns 202; Run a tool shows how to poll.
What each product holds
| Field group | What you get |
|---|---|
| Identity | Product title |
| Price | Tiered price in CNY |
| Order terms | Minimum order quantity |
| Demand | Sales and repurchase rate |
| Supplier | Supplier name and location |
Titles and supplier names come back as the page shows them, usually Chinese. Prices are in CNY.
Recipes
Set minOrderQuantity to your first order size and merchantType to superFactory, then rank by repurchase rate to find sellers whose buyers come back.
Read the tiered prices at 100, 500 and 1,000 pieces for each result and calculate the landed cost for your target quantity before you ask for quotes.
Set province to 广东 or city to 义乌市 and collect only suppliers near the cluster that makes the product.
Use excludeKeywords to drop titles with a second meaning, so the shortlist is not full of the wrong item.
Pass the results to a model to translate titles, group similar products and draft a short supplier inquiry for each.
Prefer plain words? Connect the MCP server and tell Claude Code or Cursor: "Search 1688 for 'silicone phone case', min order at most 200, super factories only, max 40 results. Translate the titles and rank them by repurchase rate."
Pair it with other sourcing sources
1688 gives the factory price. These show who else sells the product and what the end customer pays:
Wholesale products from 1688.com (Alibaba's China B2B market) by keyword: title, tiered price in CNY, minimum order, sales, repurchase rate, supplier and location.
Alibaba.com product listings or suppliers by keyword: price range, minimum order, supplier, years on Alibaba, verification, ratings, delivery estimate.
Taobao and Tmall product pages by link: title, price and promotions, shop, brand, images, specs, sales and variants.
AliExpress products for a search: price, orders, rating, store.
US customs import records from ImportYeti: importers and their overseas suppliers, shipment counts and dates, addresses, trademarks.
alibaba-productslists export-facing suppliers with price ranges, verification and ratings.taobao-productshows the retail price and promotions for one product link.aliexpress-productsshows what the same kind of product sells for to export buyers.importyeti-companieslooks up companies that import goods, for checking who buys from a supplier.
For several marketplaces in one job, see e-commerce intelligence; for single Taobao links, Taobao product data.
What you pay
You pay per product: starting a run holds its maximum cost, the per-call fee plus the per-product fee times max_results, and the run settles to what it returned. The rest of the hold goes back to your balance. A run that fails or times out pays only for the products it delivered, and a run refused at the start costs nothing.
Reading 200 products is billed as 200 products, whether they come from one keyword or several. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: top up from $5, and one balance pays for tools and models. The card above shows today's price; pricing lists every tool.
Frequently asked questions
Can I search 1688 in English?+
Yes. keywords accepts English or Chinese. The results themselves come back as the page shows them, mostly in Chinese.
What price do I get?+
The tiered price in CNY, so you see the price at each quantity break rather than one number.
How do I filter to real factories?+
Set merchantType to superFactory for top-tier manufacturers with verified production capacity, or verifiedMerchant for trusted sellers with a strong track record.
Can I fetch specific products instead of searching?+
Yes. Put 1688 product ids in offerIds and the tool fetches them directly, with no search.
How many products can one run return?+
Up to 500 per run, set with maxResults and max_results.
Do I need a subscription?+
No. You add credit to a prepaid balance and each run draws it down. Failed runs pay only for the results they delivered, and nothing renews automatically.
Comparing wholesale with retail prices? See e-commerce intelligence, Taobao product data and the tool catalog.