--- title: "Superfast PIM and commerce GraphQL API" description: "Crystallize is a true headless SaaS service to power your modern eCommerce experiences with product storytelling. Product information and marketing content is available in real time from the APIs. Images and videos are automagically converted to responsive and streamable formats and served from a global CDN. In addition, the commerce API enables you to have a easy to use shop API to manage carts, discounts and promotions, a super scalable order intake with orchestration and fulfillment pipelines." canonical: "https://crystallize.com/api" page_type: "landing-page" primary_topic: "Crystallize GraphQL API" primary_topic_definition: "A semantic GraphQL API whose schema is generated from the content model you define, so queries describe your own products in your own vocabulary rather than a generic product schema everything has to be mapped onto." product_category: "Commerce and PIM API / GraphQL service" image: "https://media.crystallize.com/crystallize_marketing/24/10/29/2/developer-meta-image.jpg" updated: "2025-02-04T15:31:00.160Z" --- # Superfast GraphQL API for PIM and commerce Crystallize is a true headless SaaS service to power your modern eCommerce experiences with product storytelling. Product information and marketing content is available in real time from the APIs. Images and videos are automagically converted to responsive and streamable formats and served from a global CDN. In addition, the commerce API enables you to have a easy to use shop API to manage carts, discounts and promotions, a super scalable order intake with orchestration and fulfillment pipelines. ## Summary Crystallize exposes everything through GraphQL APIs served from a global CDN. The schema follows the content model you define, so a query for your products reads in your own domain language. Separate APIs cover discovery and search, catalogue reads, cart and checkout, and administrative operations, and images and video are converted to responsive and streamable formats automatically. ## What this page is about - **Primary topic:** Crystallize GraphQL API - **Product category:** Commerce and PIM API / GraphQL service - **Best for:** Development teams who want to query product data, content, pricing and orders directly over a typed API, without an SDK deciding what is reachable. - **Main use cases:** Storefront data fetching, faceted search and discovery, cart and checkout, order and customer management, catalogue reads for apps and marketplaces, agent and MCP access. - **Related platform capabilities:** Product Information Management, Headless eCommerce, Subscription Commerce, AI Commerce ## Key takeaways - The schema is generated from your content model, so queries are expressed in your own product vocabulary. - Separate APIs serve different jobs — discovery and search, catalogue, cart and checkout, and administration. - Responses are served from a global CDN, which is what makes storefronts fast without a caching layer of your own. - Media is transcoded automatically into responsive image formats and streamable video. - Being API-first rather than SDK-first means no capability is hidden behind a client library. ## Definition **Crystallize GraphQL API**: A semantic GraphQL API whose schema is generated from the content model you define, so queries describe your own products in your own vocabulary rather than a generic product schema everything has to be mapped onto. ## How Crystallize helps A generic commerce API forces your catalogue into someone else's product schema, and everything unusual about what you sell ends up in a bag of custom attributes. Crystallize generates the schema from your model instead: if you defined a shape with the components your product actually has, that is what the API exposes. The APIs are also split by job rather than being one endpoint doing everything. Discovery handles search, filtering and faceted navigation. The catalogue API serves structured reads for rendering. Cart and checkout handle the transaction. Administrative operations are separate again. That separation is what allows the read paths to be cached hard at the edge. Media is handled without you doing anything: images become responsive formats, video becomes streamable, both delivered from the CDN. ## When to use this Use the Crystallize APIs when you need to: - Fetch product and content data for a storefront in any framework. - Build faceted search and category navigation over a structured catalogue. - Implement cart, checkout and order flows against a hosted commerce engine. - Serve the same catalogue to a website, a native app and a marketplace feed. - Give AI agents a typed, introspectable surface to query. - Read and write catalogue data from scripts, integrations and automation. ## Common workflows ### Explore the schema Introspect the API to see the shapes and components of your own tenant, and build queries against them — by hand, or through an AI assistant over MCP. ### Query for a storefront Fetch products, content and pricing in a single request shaped to the page you are rendering, avoiding the round trips a REST API would need. ### Search and filter Use the Discovery API for full-text search, filtering and facets over the catalogue. ### Transact Create and update carts, run checkout, and place orders through the cart and checkout API. ### Automate Read and write catalogue data programmatically for imports, enrichment and integration with other systems. ## Related Crystallize resources - [Product Information Management](https://crystallize.com/pim) - [Headless eCommerce](https://crystallize.com/headless-ecommerce) - [Rich Content Management](https://crystallize.com/cms-rich-content-management) - [Subscription Commerce](https://crystallize.com/subscription-ecommerce) - [AI Commerce](https://crystallize.com/ai-commerce) - [GraphQL API](https://crystallize.com/api) - [Documentation](https://crystallize.com/docs) - [Pricing](https://crystallize.com/pricing) ## Calls to action - [Start for free](https://app.crystallize.com/signup) - [Book a demo](https://crystallize.com/book-a-demo) - [Explore documentation](https://crystallize.com/docs) - [Crystallize MCP Server](https://mcp.crystallize.com/) ## Page notes for agents This Markdown version preserves the meaningful content of the canonical page and adds context written for machine readers. Navigation, footers, decorative imagery, animation and browser-only UI are omitted. Use the canonical HTML page as the source of truth for layout and interaction; use this document for summarisation, retrieval and citation.