Scrape Lidl Romania Offers, Catalogues, and Products

Purpose

Return the full set of currently-active Lidl Romania weekly offers (catalogues / leaflets) and the permanent in-store product assortment with prices. Three orthogonal data surfaces — all reachable via unauthenticated JSON / file endpoints, no browser, no stealth, no cookies:

Offers / catalogues listing — every active flyer (national + per-store regional supplements) with metadata, validity dates, thumbnails, page count, and PDF URLs.
Catalogue detail — for any single flyer: full page imagery (web + high-res), per-page OCR keyWords, per-page altText, external product hotspot links, validity windows, downloadable PDF.
Permanent product assortment with daily prices — the entire ~2,500-SKU in-store assortment (food, household, cosmetics, etc.) as a freely-downloadable XLSB file refreshed Monday–Friday.

Read-only — no login, no Lidl Plus account, no store selection.

When to Use

Daily / weekly catalogue monitoring — detect new flyers, expiring offers, regional supplements.
Price tracking across the permanent assortment (Pret vanzare column refreshed Mon–Fri).
Building a Lidl-RO product database (~2,500 items × ~33 categories).
Pulling page imagery / PDFs for downstream OCR or layout analysis.
Any task that says "what's on offer at Lidl Romania this week" — the catalogues are the only authoritative source (Lidl Romania has no e-commerce site; printed catalogues + the daily pricelist are the only product data surface).

Workflow

Lidl-RO's catalogue platform is run by Schwarz Group on endpoints.leaflets.schwarz — a public, CORS-open (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *) JSON API behind a Myracloud CDN. The XLSB pricelist sits on Lidl's own CDN. All three endpoints are reachable with plain HTTP from any IP — no auth, no proxies, no stealth required. Lead with the API path; the catalogue viewer UI on lidl.ro/l/ro/cataloage/... is a thin React client over the same v4/flyer endpoint, so browser scraping is strictly wasteful.

1. List all currently-active catalogues

GET https://endpoints.leaflets.schwarz/v4/overview?client_locale=lidl/ro-RO

Returns categories[].subcategories[].flyers[]. Observed subcategories on 2026-05-24:

Subcategory	Typical flyer count	Examples
`Cataloage săptămânale`	3–4	"Catalogul săptămânal de luni 18.05 până duminică 24.05"
`Oferte speciale`	4–6	Per-store / regional supplements ("Oferte speciale Breaza")
`Cataloage speciale`	1–3	"Catalogul de vinuri", "Universul categoriilor de produse Lidl"
`Lidl Plus`	1	"Broșura Lidl Plus"

Per-flyer fields you'll want:

{
  "id": "019e15ca-3d0f-7d03-b9da-35c55ce34018",
  "name": "Catalogul săptămânal",
  "title": "de luni, 18.05 până duminică, 24.05",
  "startDate": "2026-05-13",
  "endDate": "2026-05-24",
  "offerStartDate": "2026-05-18",
  "offerEndDate": "2026-05-24",
  "status": "current",
  "discoverable": true,
  "pdfUrl": "https://object.storage.eu01.onstackit.cloud/leaflets/pdfs/{id}/{slug}-00.pdf",
  "hiResPdfUrl": "...",
  "fileSize": 65022562,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",
  "flyerUrlAbsolute": "https://www.lidl.ro/l/ro/cataloage/{slug}/ar/{regionCode}",
  "flyerJson": "https://endpoints.leaflets.schwarz/v4/flyer?version=4&flyer_identifier={slug}&client=lidl",
  "regions": [{"type":"store","code":576}]
}

The flyerJson field is the canonical detail-endpoint URL for step 2 (note: it omits region_id/region_code; you can either trust the slug or rebuild the URL yourself with explicit region params).

2. Fetch a single catalogue's full content

GET https://endpoints.leaflets.schwarz/v4/flyer
    ?flyer_identifier={slug}
    &region_id={regionCode}      # 0 for national catalogues
    &region_code={regionCode}    # mirrors region_id

The {slug} is the kebab-case path component of flyerUrlAbsolute (e.g. catalogul-saptamanal-de-luni-18-05-pana-duminica-24-05). National catalogues use region_id=0&region_code=0; per-store supplements use the regions[0].code from step 1 (e.g. 576 = Breaza). Response shape (top-level → flyer):

{
  "flyer": {
    "id": "<uuid>",
    "name": "Catalogul săptămânal",
    "title": "de luni, 18.05 până duminică, 24.05",
    "locale": "ro-RO",
    "countryCode": "RO",
    "category": "Cataloage și reviste săptămânale",
    "subcategory": "Cataloage săptămânale",
    "startDate": "2026-05-13",
    "endDate": "2026-05-24",
    "offerStartDate": "2026-05-18",
    "offerEndDate": "2026-05-24",
    "status": "current",
    "isActive": true,
    "pdfUrl": "...",            // ~65 MB hi-res PDF
    "hiResPdfUrl": "...",       // same value in observed payloads
    "fileSize": 65022562,
    "pages": [                  // 86 pages for a typical weekly catalogue
      {
        "id": "<uuid>",
        "number": 1,
        "width": 1415, "height": 2400,
        "type": "STANDARD",
        "pageType": "page",
        "image":     "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",   // 1200px JPEG
        "zoom":      "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",   // 2400px JPEG
        "thumbnail": "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",   // 400px JPEG
        "altText": "Oferte speciale Lidl: fructe, legume, ulei, carne, ...",
        "keyWords": "Roșii Cherry Ciorchine 2996 Lei 2799 -30% 1499 ...",  // OCR text
        "links": []             // see below — usually empty on RO
      }
    ],
    "products": [],             // ALWAYS EMPTY on Lidl-RO (see Gotchas)
    "relatedFlyers": [...]      // sibling catalogues (alternate weeks, related books)
  }
}

Where the per-product data hides: flyer.products[] is always empty for Lidl Romania — Lidl-RO does not annotate page hotspots with structured product records the way some other Lidl markets do. Per-product info must be derived from:

page.keyWords — space-tokenized OCR text. Contains product names, prices (e.g. 2996 = 29.96 RON, 2799 = 27.99 RON), percent discounts (-30%), and weight/size annotations. Treat as bag-of-words; do not assume order.
page.altText — short human-readable description of what the page depicts.
page.links[] — external URLs (typically partner/landing pages, e.g. UEFA / Heineken redirects). Almost never present (2 of 86 pages in the May-18 weekly catalogue).
The hi-res PDF (hiResPdfUrl) — if you need per-item structure, run OCR over the PDF; pages are independently OCR-able JPEGs at page.zoom.

3. Pull the full permanent product list (~2,500 SKUs, daily refresh)

GET https://www.lidl.ro/explore/assets/webPriceData/ro/preturiZilniceLidl.xlsb

Returns an ~85 KB XLSB workbook (single sheet, name EPEL). Columns (Romanian):

Column	English	Example
`Denumire comerciala`	Product name	`Capsune caserola 500g`
`Gramaj`	Pack size	`500g`, `1kg`, `per kg`, `4buc`
`Categorie`	Category	`Legume si Fructe`
`Pret vanzare`	Sale price (RON)	`12.49`

Parse with any XLSB library (e.g. SheetJS / xlsx in Node, openpyxl+xlrd won't work — XLSB is binary; use pyxlsb for Python). 33 distinct categories observed on 2026-05-24:

Baby, Bauturi, Branzeturi, Cafea, Carne si peste, Ceai, Cereale, Congelate,
Conserve, Cosmetice, Detergenti, Dulciuri si snackuri, Hartie igienica si servetele,
Hrana pentru animale, Inghetata, Ingrediente pentru copt, Ketchup mustar sosuri,
Lactate, Legume si Fructe, Mezeluri, Miere dulceturi si alte creme,
Mirodenii si condimente, Oua, Paine si patiserie, Paste fainoase, Proaspete,
Produse de baza, Produse pentru curatenie, Supe si baze pentru supe,
Suplimente alimentare, Tigari si tigarete, Ulei unt margarina, Uz casnic

Row count observed: 2,534 products (3,000 rows with trailing blanks). The page at https://www.lidl.ro/c/preturile-la-zi/s10019622 says "every day, Monday through Friday we provide the price list of all products in the permanent assortment" — treat refresh cadence as business-daily and re-pull each weekday morning if you're tracking deltas.

4. (Optional) Composite snapshot

For a full one-shot scrape:

Hit /v4/overview → enumerate flyer slugs.
For each flyer with discoverable: true, hit /v4/flyer?flyer_identifier={slug}&region_id={code}&region_code={code} and store the response.
Hit /preturiZilniceLidl.xlsb and parse → products[] table.
Emit a unified JSON envelope (schema in ## Expected Output).

Total wall time: under 10 seconds for ~12 catalogues + the pricelist. Total bandwidth (excluding PDFs and page imagery): ~2 MB.

Browser fallback

Only needed if the JSON API or XLSB file ever return 4xx — none was observed in 2026-05-24 testing. The browser path:

Open https://www.lidl.ro/c/cataloage-online/s10019911 — lists all catalogues as anchor tags with href="https://www.lidl.ro/l/ro/cataloage/{slug}/ar/{region}". Extract these anchors with browse get html body and a regex over href="https://www\.lidl\.ro/l/ro/cataloage/([^/]+)/ar/(\d+)".
For each catalogue, open the leaflet viewer URL. The HTML embeds image refs on imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz directly, but the per-page keyWords / altText / link metadata is only available through the v4/flyer JSON the React app fetches. There is no equivalent in the rendered DOM — falling back to the browser loses these fields, so the JSON API is strictly preferred.
For the pricelist, open https://www.lidl.ro/c/preturile-la-zi/s10019622 and follow the "Descarcă fișierul" anchor — same URL as step 3 above.

No stealth or residential proxy is required for either path. A bare Browserbase session works.

Site-Specific Gotchas

Lidl Romania has no e-commerce site. /c/alimente-bauturi/, /c/sortiment-principal/, etc. are content/navigation pages, not product catalogs. Do not waste turns scraping them for products — the only structured product data on the entire domain is the XLSB pricelist (permanent assortment) plus the catalogue OCR keyWords (promotional offers).
flyer.products[] is always empty on Lidl-RO — verified across the weekly catalogue (86 pages, 0 products), the related-flyers list (6 siblings), and the next-week catalogue. Some other Lidl markets (e.g. .de, .es) populate this array with tagged page hotspots; Lidl-RO does not. Plan around OCR / PDF analysis for per-item promotional pricing, not a clean JSON product list.
The leaflet API requires no auth, no cookies, no Referer header, no proxy. Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * is set. A plain curl from any IP works. Don't waste a Browserbase session on this unless the fallback path triggers.
Slugs encode dates but are not date-parameterized — you cannot construct future-week URLs by date arithmetic. Always discover slugs via the /v4/overview endpoint, then call /v4/flyer?flyer_identifier={slug}.
Regional supplements need the right region_code. The "Oferte speciale Breaza" flyer in the overview has regions[0].code = 576; calling /v4/flyer?...&region_id=0&region_code=0 against that slug returns a "Requested Flyer not found" response. Use the regions[].code from the overview verbatim.
pdfUrl and hiResPdfUrl are usually identical on Lidl-RO weekly catalogues (both ~65 MB). They may diverge on smaller promo catalogues. Either is safe to fetch; PDFs live on object.storage.eu01.onstackit.cloud/leaflets/pdfs/{flyer-uuid}/...pdf (Schwarz's STACKIT object storage — no auth required, public read).
imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz URLs are base64-encoded. The path segment after g:no/ decodes (base64) to s3://leaflets/images/{flyer-uuid}/page-NN_{hash}.png. Treat the URLs as opaque blobs — do not try to reconstruct them; copy them out of the API response.
keyWords is OCR output, not a clean field. Prices appear as digit sequences with the decimal stripped (2996 = 29.96 RON, 1499 = 14.99 RON, -30% is a discount badge). Sizes (05, 600, 46%) are likewise context-dependent. Anything beyond simple keyword search will need a parser tuned to OCR conventions.
discoverable: false flyers exist — they're returned by /v4/overview (so the overview is exhaustive) but the flyerUrlAbsolute is not surfaced in the catalogues-hub HTML. Don't filter them out unless your task explicitly only wants "publicly-promoted" catalogues.
XLSB ≠ XLSX. The pricelist is .xlsb (binary Excel) not .xlsx (XML Excel). Python's openpyxl cannot read it — use pyxlsb or pandas.read_excel(..., engine='pyxlsb'). Node SheetJS reads both.
Pricelist has trailing blank rows. xlsx's sheet_to_json returns 3,000 rows but only ~2,534 are populated; filter on a non-empty Denumire comerciala.
Pricelist refresh cadence is business-daily (Mon–Fri). Page copy explicitly says "În fiecare zi, de luni până vineri îți punem la dispoziție lista de prețuri" — do not expect weekend updates.
Cookie consent dialog (OneTrust) loads on first page view of any lidl.ro page in a browser. It does NOT block the underlying network — API calls succeed before consent. Only the browser fallback path needs the REFUZAȚI/ACCEPTAȚI button click; for the JSON / XLSB direct-fetch path, ignore it.
No GraphQL trap to investigate. Unlike e.g. OpenTable, Lidl-RO's data layer is plain REST JSON; the endpoints.leaflets.schwarz/v4/* surface is the only relevant API and is undocumented but fully open.
Catalogue UUID flyer.id is stable across requests but slugs may change (a "Catalogul săptămânal" for 2026-W21 vs 2026-W22 has the same name/title structure but different slugs and UUIDs). Persist id when caching, not slug.

Expected Output

{
  "fetched_at": "2026-05-24T17:40:00Z",
  "catalogues": [
    {
      "id": "019e15ca-3d0f-7d03-b9da-35c55ce34018",
      "slug": "catalogul-saptamanal-de-luni-18-05-pana-duminica-24-05",
      "name": "Catalogul săptămânal",
      "title": "de luni, 18.05 până duminică, 24.05",
      "category": "Cataloage și reviste săptămânale",
      "subcategory": "Cataloage săptămânale",
      "start_date": "2026-05-13",
      "end_date": "2026-05-24",
      "offer_start_date": "2026-05-18",
      "offer_end_date": "2026-05-24",
      "status": "current",
      "region_code": 0,
      "page_count": 86,
      "pdf_url": "https://object.storage.eu01.onstackit.cloud/leaflets/pdfs/019e15ca-3d0f-7d03-b9da-35c55ce34018/Catalogul-saptamanal-de-luni-18-05-pana-duminica-24-05-00.pdf",
      "thumbnail_url": "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/auS0yK8CaVdMCldZk0OaEJAfubt3vOoQGsDw2EckCmQ/rs:fit:400:400:1/g:no/czM6Ly9sZWFmbGV0cy9pbWFnZXMv...jpg",
      "viewer_url": "https://www.lidl.ro/l/ro/cataloage/catalogul-saptamanal-de-luni-18-05-pana-duminica-24-05/ar/0",
      "pages": [
        {
          "number": 1,
          "image_url": "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",
          "zoom_url":  "https://imgproxy.leaflets.schwarz/.../...jpg",
          "alt_text": "Oferte speciale Lidl: fructe, legume, ulei, carne, cafea, bere și articole de uz casnic.",
          "key_words": "Roșii Cherry Ciorchine 2996 Lei 2799 3999 Plus -30% 1499 ...",
          "links": []
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "products": [
    {
      "name": "Capsune caserola 500g",
      "size": "500g",
      "category": "Legume si Fructe",
      "price_ron": 12.49,
      "price_currency": "RON"
    },
    {
      "name": "Capsune ladita 1kg",
      "size": "1kg",
      "category": "Legume si Fructe",
      "price_ron": 39.99,
      "price_currency": "RON"
    }
  ],
  "products_count": 2534,
  "products_source": "https://www.lidl.ro/explore/assets/webPriceData/ro/preturiZilniceLidl.xlsb",
  "products_refresh_cadence": "business-daily (Mon-Fri)"
}

Empty / error shapes:

// No active catalogues (e.g. between weekly releases — unlikely)
{ "fetched_at": "...", "catalogues": [], "products": [...], "products_count": 2534 }

// Pricelist temporarily unavailable (e.g. weekend or rebuild window)
{ "fetched_at": "...", "catalogues": [...], "products": [], "products_count": 0, "products_error": "XLSB fetch returned 5xx — retry next business day" }

scrape-offers-catalogues-products