microsoft-store-research

Research Microsoft Store apps and games using Crawlora search, categories, charts, publisher listings, product details, and reviews. Use to compare Windows apps, investigate a publisher, inspect store awards, or sample regional app reviews.

Access and contract

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your Crawlora key. Prefer the named Crawlora MCP tools when connected; otherwise use the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh, which sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Read reference/endpoints.md for exact tool names, methods, and parameters. Check application code as well as HTTP status; payloads are inside data. Stop on authentication errors, back off on 429, and retry a transient upstream failure once. Bound pages and calls by the requested scope and credit budget. Preserve source URLs, identifiers, and collection times.

Compare Microsoft Store listings, regional offers, charts, and review evidence. Keep Windows apps, games, subscriptions, themes, and device listings distinct.

Discover, sample, and verify

• Fix store country and display locale before discovery. Search with a clear media_type; all ignores the category filter. Discover exact categories via microsoftstore_categories, including department-specific differences.
• Resolve the returned product_id before product, related, review, or review summary requests. Inspect publisher and listing kind to avoid confusing a similarly named third-party app with an official product.
• Charts use their own documented list values. App subcategories require their parent category on charts; a chart subcategory is not a valid search category. Award editorial_id values link to the editorial endpoint; do not invent IDs.
• Search follows opaque next_cursor; charts and reviews use documented page parameters. Stop at the budget or pagination end and record the sample coverage.
• Use publisher, spotlight, recommendation, and event surfaces only when they address the request. Related listings are recommendations, not verified clones.

sh

scripts/crawlora.sh /microsoftstore/categories
scripts/crawlora.sh /microsoftstore/search query="note taking" media_type=apps country=US locale=en-US
scripts/crawlora.sh /microsoftstore/charts list=TopFree media_type=apps country=US locale=en-US
# Use a returned product_id for both calls:
# scripts/crawlora.sh /microsoftstore/product product_id="$PRODUCT_ID" country=US locale=en-US
# scripts/crawlora.sh /microsoftstore/reviews product_id="$PRODUCT_ID" sort=MostRecent page=1

Compare and deliver

Preserve price currency, region, observation time, listing kind, publisher, platform requirements, and available release dates. A free listing can still have paid features; do not infer licensing or total cost from its sticker price. Formatted rating counts such as 34K are approximate, not exact review totals. Keep review-page samples separate from aggregate ratings and review summaries; a few reviews cannot establish population sentiment or download counts. A chart position is not revenue or installation volume. Return a sourced comparison, review themes with sample size, and compatibility/pricing questions still open. Do not install apps, subscribe, or purchase from a store research request.