---
title: "Categories"
description: "eBay categories — accepted parameters and what comes back."
---

```
GET|POST /v1/ebay/categories
```

**Price** $0.001 per call, plus $0.001 for each extra call it makes — at most 1 more, so $0.002 in total. Only a descent past level three adds one: the first three levels cost 1 unit, anything below them 2. [List price](https://apinoa.com/en/pricing); the rate steps down above 1,000 calls a day.

| Parameter | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| `categoryId` | string |  | Omit for the top-level departments; pass a category id to list its children. |
| `region` | string |  | Buyer country as ISO 3166-1 alpha-2; sets availability, shipping and price. |

What is there to browse. eBay is the most complete of the five here: one call returns the whole
published tree.

```bash
# the 18 departments
curl "https://gateway.apinoa.com/v1/ebay/categories" -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"
# what is under eBay Motors
curl "https://gateway.apinoa.com/v1/ebay/categories?categoryId=6000" -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"
```

The response carries `path` (the ancestors, leaf last) and `categories`. Three levels are published;
below that `categories` is `[]`, which means "eBay lists no children here", not an error.

**Not every category has listings behind it.** Some are navigation hubs -- they lead to child
categories but list no products themselves. The four `bn_...` departments (Electronics,
Collectibles & Art, Books/Movies/Music, Tickets & Travel) are always hubs and come back with
`"browsable": false`, but they are not the only ones, and **the rest cannot be predicted from the
taxonomy**: `2536` and `6028` are both top-level categories with children, and `2536` lists 39 items
while `6028` lists none.

So `browse` says so directly. Asking it for a hub returns `400 CATEGORY_NOT_BROWSABLE` rather than an
empty list -- an empty list is also what a sold-out category gives, and you could not tell the two
apart. Treat it as the instruction to call `categories` with that same id and browse one of its
children.