List categories and tags

Try in Playground

List the category tree (with subcategories) and the browse tags with live viewer counts; sort=viewers returns the tags in trending order.

GET/v1/whatnot/categoriesx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

sortenumdefault: "source"query

source (default) keeps the site's order; viewers orders tags by live viewer count (the trending view).

one of: source, viewers · default: "source"

Response fields

requestIdstring

Random operational correlation ID.

Upstream GraphQL requests, response bytes and elapsed milliseconds.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable public data was retrieved.

statusenum

success, partial, failed or challenged. Inspect coverage even for HTTP 200.

one of: success, partial

sourceUrlstring

Public www.whatnot.com URL the data belongs to.

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

Complete means this bounded page had no known omissions; warnings name each omission.

coverage.sourcestring

Always public_api (Whatnot's public web GraphQL endpoint).

coverage.completeboolean

False when any warning is present.

coverage.warningsstring[]

Machine-readable omission codes such as sections_skipped or record_limit.

Top-level categories with subcategories.

up to 500 items

categories.idstring

Category node id.

categories.typestringnullable

Category slug.

categories.labelstringnullable

Display label.

categories.parentIdstringnullable

Parent category id.

Category image.

categories.image.idstringnullable

Always included.

categories.image.urlstringnullable

Always included.

Child categories (id, type, label).

up to 200 items

categories.subcategories.idstring

Always included.

categories.subcategories.typestringnullable

Always included.

categories.subcategories.labelstringnullable

Always included.

Livestream tags ordered as the site lists them.

up to 500 items

tags.idstring

Tag node id.

tags.namestringnullable

Tag slug used in /tag/{name} URLs.

tags.labelstringnullable

Display label.

tags.deeplinkstringnullable

Site deeplink.

tags.viewerCountintegernullable

Current viewers across the tag.

Tag image.

tags.image.idstringnullable

Always included.

tags.image.urlstringnullable

Always included.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, duplicate, unsupported or invalid parameters, or more than one selector.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid service key.
404	`not_found`	Unknown user, livestream, listing or tag.
429	`upstream_rate_limited`	Whatnot rate limited the request; no automatic retry.
502	`upstream_challenged`	Cloudflare challenge or HTTP 403/503 from Whatnot.
502	`unsupported_page` `unsafe_redirect` `response_too_large` `payload_too_complex` `request_limit` `upstream_error`	Bounded retrieval failed or the GraphQL response no longer matches the expected schema.
503	`busy`	All worker slots occupied.
504	`timeout`	Deadline exceeded.
200	`partial`	Coverage warnings such as sections_skipped or record_limit.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Whatnot request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={},
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/whatnot/categories"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001",
  "categories": [
    {
      "id": "Q2F0ZWdvcnlOb2RlOjE0OQ==",
      "type": "trading_card_games",
      "label": "Trading Card Games",
      "parentId": null,
      "image": null,
      "subcategories": [
        {
          "id": "Q2F0ZWdvcnlOb2RlOjI=",
          "type": "pokemon_cards",
          "label": "Pokémon Cards"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "tags": [
    {
      "id": "TGl2ZXN0cmVhbVRhZ05vZGU6OTA3",
      "name": "pokemon_cards",
      "label": "Pokémon Cards",
      "deeplink": "tag/pokemon_cards",
      "viewerCount": 9952,
      "image": {
        "id": "SW1hZ2U6MQ==",
        "url": "https://images.whatnot.com/tag.jpg"
      }
    }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.whatnot.com/browse",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_api",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 24000,
    "durationMs": 380
  }
}

Missing, duplicate, unsupported or invalid parameters, or more than one selector.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}