Categories

Use the section that matches your caller: storefront clients use Shopper REST or Search, trusted services use Management, and signed-in customer flows use Auth. Prefer Search API for new discovery-heavy storefront work.

Use Categories when the job is about hierarchical catalog navigation: category records, category trees, and category-product membership.

Management API category operations own category creation, updates, recursive deletion, product assignment, category trees, and bulk category or relationship changes. Shopper API category routes are read-only compatibility routes for storefront category reads; prefer Search for new discovery-heavy storefront work.

Use category-product operations when the relationship between a product and a category is changing. Use Products when the product record itself is changing, and use Search when the storefront needs faceted discovery rather than direct category administration.

For workflow guidance across taxonomy, curated merchandising groups, reusable labels, brand/series records, templates, and storefront discovery reads, see Catalog organization and discovery.

Shopper API · read

Read and inspect

Management API · read, create, update, remove, and bulk operations

Read and inspect

Create or attach

Update or repair

Remove or deactivate

Bulk operations