Read MercadoLibre prices across eighteen country sites
The MercadoLibre API returns product, price, deals and review data from Latin America's largest marketplace as clean JSON.
5 active endpoints. Every call is 1 credit.
- POST/mercadolibre/v1/deals
- POST/mercadolibre/v1/category_items
- POST/mercadolibre/v1/reviews
- POST/mercadolibre/v1/suggest
- POST/mercadolibre/v1/category
What Mercado Libre endpoints does ReefAPI ship?
5 live read endpoints. Read-only data API: no writes, no account actions, no dashboard access on the target site.
Mercado Libre API
4 of 5 endpoints, ready to run
One category: its name, its item total, its path from the root and its children — the map you navigate by.
// Press "Try it" and this pane shows exactly what the // live site returned this second — including an empty // result, if that is the truth. No key, no account.
How the Mercado Libre API works
Mercado Libre is a normal ReefAPI surface — the same four rules that hold for every other engine on the key.
No OAuth app, no request signing, no per-site account. One key covers all 185 engines.
Every route is a POST with a JSON body. Parameters are validated against the published schema before anything is charged.
Credits, not seats. Failed and blocked calls are never charged, and cache hits cost nothing.
One envelope everywhere. meta carries latency_ms, record_count and the endpoint that answered.
Category, then the products in it
There is no keyword search on this engine — the honest version of that sentence is on the page rather than buried. The route to a product is the category tree, and it takes two calls.
{"category_id": "MLA1051"}Read children[].id. Those child ids are the narrow categories, and they are what you feed the next call.
{"category_id": <child id>}Most rows carry a previous price here, which is where a discount actually comes from on this engine.
Two credits per category. Every endpoint costs the same, so the cheapest run is the one that does not repeat the tree walk — cache it.
curl -X POST https://api.reefapi.com/mercadolibre/v1/category \
-H "x-api-key: $REEF_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"category_id":"MLA1051"}'{
"ok": true,
"data": { … },
"meta": {
"api": "mercadolibre",
"endpoint": "category",
"mode": "live",
"latency_ms": …,
"record_count": …
},
"error": null
}MercadoLibre site IDs: MLA, MLB, MLM, MLC, MCO and the rest
MercadoLibre is not one marketplace — it is a separate site per country, and the site_id picks which one you are calling. The same prefix is carried inside every id the API returns, so an id tells you which country it came from. Measured 2026-08-26 by calling deals once for each site.
| site_id | Country | Currency returned | Listing host | Example item_id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MLA | Argentina | ARS | mercadolibre.com.ar | MLA2021354154 |
| MLB | Brazil | BRL | mercadolivre.com.br | MLB7245055100 |
| MLM | Mexico | MXN | mercadolibre.com.mx | MLM2305625685 |
| MLC | Chile | CLP | mercadolibre.cl | MLC3787927218 |
| MCO | Colombia | COP | mercadolibre.com.co | MCO2881784742 |
| MLU | Uruguay | UYU | mercadolibre.com.uy | MLU698399113 |
| MPE | Peru | PEN | mercadolibre.com.pe | MPE885394014 |
| MLV | Venezuela | USD | mercadolibre.com.ve | MLV757702281 |
| MEC | Ecuador | USD | mercadolibre.com.ec | MEC622991704 |
site_id also accepts MBO (Bolivia), MPY (Paraguay), MRD (Dominican Republic), MCR (Costa Rica), MGT (Guatemala), MPA (Panama), MHN (Honduras), MNI (Nicaragua) and MSV (El Salvador). On 2026-08-26 none of those nine returned a deals feed, so they are not in the table above rather than listed as if they were verified. Default site_id is MLA.
What MLA, MLB and MLM actually mean
This is the question people arrive on this page already asking, word for word, in search. Here is the answer, checked by calling the same category number on five country sites and comparing what came back.
Eighteen country sites are accepted, from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico down to Central America. Each one has its own domain, its own catalogue and its own currency.
MLA is Argentina, MLB Brazil, MLM Mexico, MLC Chile, MCO Colombia. Every id on this engine carries it: category ids, listing ids and product ids all start with those three letters, and a bare number with no prefix is rejected as not found.
Top-level category numbers do line up: 1051 is mobile phones on all five sites we checked. Their children do not. Argentina's accessories child came back as a different number from the identical child on the other four. Never assume a category id maps across by swapping the prefix.
On the category endpoints the prefix on the id wins and the site parameter is ignored. Asking for an Argentine category while passing Brazil as the site returned sixty Argentine rows priced in pesos. It is the id that routes the call, not the parameter next to it.
Pinned to the site, and it follows the prefix: Argentine pesos, Chilean pesos, Colombian pesos, Uruguayan pesos, Peruvian soles. One currency per response, never mixed.
A listing id is the prefix and ten digits; a catalogue product id is the prefix and eight. Both appear on the same row, and validating by length will reject perfectly good ids the day one changes.
Category listings answered for Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and Peru. The Brazilian phone and computer categories returned success with zero rows, twice, and so did the Mexican phone category — while the Mexican computer category returned rows. It is a category-and-site combination that goes quiet, not a whole country, and it does so without an error.
The deals endpoint is named for discounts, and every row we measured across three countries came back with an empty previous price and a zero discount. The percentage filter therefore matches nothing. Discounts are in the category listings instead, where most rows do carry a previous price.
What people build with Mercado Libre
The jobs this data is most often used for.
endpoints
credit per call
Pricing teams call deals and category_items to track MercadoLibre prices and promotions.
Catalog tools use category and suggest to map a segment's products and demand.
Review-analysis products pull reviews to monitor sentiment across LATAM listings.
What Mercado Libre data costs
The cheapest call here is 1 credit, so $15/mo (Pro) buys 10,000 of them — $1.50 per 1,000 credits. Credits roll over and never expire, and failed or blocked calls are not charged.
Full pricing →- 1,000 free credits on signup, no card
- One key, all 185 APIs, one credit pool
- Failed and blocked calls are never charged
- Credits roll over and never expire
Call it in two lines
Sign up, get 1,000 credits and one key that works on every engine. Then this is the whole protocol.
curl -X POST https://api.reefapi.com/mercadolibre/v1/category \
-H "x-api-key: $REEF_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"category_id":"MLA1051"}'import requests
r = requests.post(
"https://api.reefapi.com/mercadolibre/v1/category",
headers={"x-api-key": REEF_KEY},
json={
"category_id": "MLA1051"
},
)
print(r.json()["data"])Have a question? We got answers.
The questions people actually ask before wiring up Mercado Libre.
Get a free key →What do the MercadoLibre site IDs MLA, MLB, MLM, MLC and MCO mean?▾
They are country codes for MercadoLibre's per-country marketplaces: MLA is Argentina, MLB is Brazil, MLM is Mexico, MLC is Chile and MCO is Colombia. Every action takes a site_id (default MLA), and the money comes back in that country's currency — ARS, BRL, MXN, CLP and COP respectively, all confirmed by a live call on 2026-08-26. The table above lists the nine sites that returned data plus the nine further codes the parameter accepts.
Is a MercadoLibre item_id the same across countries?▾
No — an item_id belongs to exactly one country site, and it carries that site's prefix. Measured on 2026-08-26: MLA2021354154 (Argentina), MLB7245055100 (Brazil), MLM2305625685 (Mexico), MLC3787927218 (Chile), MCO2881784742 (Colombia). So you can read the country straight off the id, and looking up a MLB id against the Argentine site will not find it. Pass the matching site_id with the id.
What is the difference between item_id and product_id?▾
item_id is one seller's listing; product_id is the catalog entry several sellers compete on with their own prices. Both carry the site prefix — the same deals row returned item_id MLA2021354154 and product_id MLA46255802 on 2026-08-26. Use product_id when you want every offer for a product, item_id when you want the exact listing you saw.
How do I page through the MercadoLibre deals feed?▾
deals returns roughly 45-48 items per page. Set max_pages between 1 and 10 to fetch and merge consecutive pages in one call (results are deduplicated), and read meta.total_results for how deep the feed goes — 11,652 for Argentina and 13,550 for Brazil when measured on 2026-08-26. meta.pagination.has_more tells you whether to keep going. min_discount is documented as filtering to items with at least that percentage off, but it filters on the previous price and the deals feed does not carry one: measured 2026-08-27 across Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, every row came back with a null previous price and a zero discount, so min_discount matches nothing. Use category_items for discounts instead — most rows there do carry a previous price.
Do I need a MercadoLibre developer account or OAuth token?▾
No. MercadoLibre's own developer platform needs an app registration and an OAuth flow per country. This API needs neither — you send your ReefAPI key and a site_id, and the response comes back in the same { ok, data, meta, error } envelope as every other engine here.
What is the Mercado Libre API?▾
Mercado Libre API is a ReefAPI endpoint group for latin-american marketplace products and prices. It returns live JSON through POST requests under /mercadolibre/v1.
Is the Mercado Libre API free to try?▾
Yes. ReefAPI starts with 1,000 free credits, no card required. Mercado Libre calls use the same shared credit balance as every other ReefAPI engine.
Do I need a Mercado Libre login or account?▾
No login to Mercado Libre is needed for the API response. You call ReefAPI with your x-api-key header, and the playground can run live examples before you create a production key.
How fresh is the Mercado Libre data?▾
The page example is captured from a live deals call, and production requests fetch live data through ReefAPI rather than a static sample.
How many credits does the Mercado Libre API use?▾
Mercado Libre actions currently cost 1 credit per successful call. Failed or blocked calls are free, and all APIs draw from one credit pool.
Can I call Mercado Libre from an AI assistant or MCP client?▾
Yes. Connect ReefAPI once through MCP and your assistant can call mercadolibre actions with the same key, credit pool and JSON envelope used by normal REST requests.
Is the Mercado Libre API a Mercado Libre scraper?▾
It is the managed alternative to a DIY Mercado Libre scraper. Instead of building and maintaining your own scraper — proxies, headless browsers, captcha and constant breakage — you call one ReefAPI endpoint and get the same latin-american marketplace products and prices back as clean JSON.
Why does my Mercado Libre scraper keep getting blocked?▾
Most Mercado Libre scrapers break on anti-bot defenses, rate limits and IP bans that need rotating residential proxies and browser fingerprinting to clear. ReefAPI handles all of that for you — no proxies, no captchas, no maintenance — and returns live JSON. Blocked or failed calls are free.
37 E-commerce & Marketplaces APIs on the same key
One key, one credit pool, one response envelope. If you are pulling Mercado Libre, you are one call away from the rest of the category — no second contract, no second integration.
Try it on your own data before you pay anything
The call above is the real endpoint, not a recording. A free key gives you 1,000 credits, the other 184 APIs, and the same envelope everywhere.
Endpoints, parameters and credit costs on this page are read from the live catalog and cannot drift from what the API accepts. Field notes were captured on 2026-08-27.