E-commerce Price Monitor 💰 Monitor product prices across Amazon, eBay, and Shopify stores automatically. Track competitor pricing, analyze market trends, and get real-time price alerts for your e-commerce business. Perfect for online retailers, dropshippers, market researchers, and anyone who needs competitive pricing intelligence. ## 🎯 What This Actor Does This actor scrapes product data and prices from major e-commerce platforms: - Amazon - Product prices, ratings, reviews, ASIN, availability - eBay - Auction/buy-it-now prices, seller info, condition - Shopify Stores - Product prices from any Shopify-powered store Get structured, clean data perfect for: - 💰 Dynamic pricing strategies - 📊 Competitive intelligence - 🔔 Price drop alerts - 📈 Market trend analysis - 🤖 Automated repricing tools ## ✨ Key Features ### Multi-Platform Support - ✅ Amazon (all domains: .com, .co.uk, .de, etc.) - ✅ eBay (global support) - ✅ Shopify stores (10,000+ stores supported) - ✅ Generic e-commerce sites (fallback scraper) ### Advanced Anti-Bot Protection - 🛡️ Residential proxy support (Apify proxy integrated) - 🎭 Browser fingerprint randomization - ⏱️ Smart rate limiting - 🔄 Automatic retry on failure - 👤 Real browser automation (Playwright) ### Rich Data Extraction - Product title and description - Current price and currency - Brand and seller information - Stock availability status - Product ratings and review counts - High-quality image URLs - Platform-specific IDs (ASIN, SKU, etc.) - Timestamp for price history tracking ## 📥 Input Configuration json { "productUrls": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N5WRWNW\nhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/123456789", "maxProducts": 10, "headless": true, "delaySeconds": 2.0, "includeImages": true, "debugMode": false } ### Input Parameters | Parameter | Type | Required | Description | |-----------|------|----------|-------------| | productUrls | string | ✅ Yes | Product URLs to scrape (one per line) | | maxProducts | integer | No | Maximum products to scrape (0 = unlimited) | | headless | boolean | No | Run browser in headless mode (default: true) | | delaySeconds | number | No | Delay between requests in seconds (default: 2.0) | | includeImages | boolean | No | Extract product image URLs (default: true) | | debugMode | boolean | No | Enable verbose logging (default: false) | ## 📤 Output Format Each product returns structured JSON data: ### Amazon Product Example json { "url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N5WRWNW", "platform": "amazon", "title": "PlayStation 5 Console", "price": 499.99, "currency": "USD", "asin": "B08N5WRWNW", "brand": "Sony", "in_stock": true, "rating": 4.8, "review_count": 45234, "image_url": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...", "scraped_at": "2025-01-12T10:30:00Z" } ### eBay Product Example json { "url": "https://www.ebay.com/itm/123456789", "platform": "ebay", "title": "Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB", "price": 1099.00, "currency": "USD", "condition": "Brand New", "seller": "authorized_retailer", "in_stock": true, "image_url": "https://i.ebayimg.com/images/...", "scraped_at": "2025-01-12T10:30:05Z" } ### Shopify Product Example json { "url": "https://example.myshopify.com/products/sample", "platform": "shopify", "title": "Premium Wireless Headphones", "price": 199.99, "currency": "USD", "in_stock": true, "image_url": "https://cdn.shopify.com/...", "scraped_at": "2025-01-12T10:30:10Z" } ## 🚀 Quick Start ### 1. Basic Price Monitoring Monitor a few products across different platforms: json { "productUrls": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N5WRWNW\nhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/123456789\nhttps://store.example.com/products/item" } ### 2. Bulk Price Scraping Scrape up to 100 products with custom delays: json { "productUrls": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/PRODUCT1\nhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/PRODUCT2\n...", "maxProducts": 100, "delaySeconds": 3.0 } ### 3. Scheduled Price Tracking Set up the actor to run on a schedule: - Hourly - Track volatile prices (flash sales, auctions) - Daily - Monitor regular price changes - Weekly - Long-term trend analysis Use Apify's scheduling feature to automatically run and track price history. ## 💡 Use Cases ### 1. Dynamic Pricing for Retailers Monitor competitor prices in real-time and adjust your pricing automatically to stay competitive. Example: Track top 20 competitors for your bestselling products, update prices every 6 hours. ### 2. Dropshipping Product Research Find profitable products by comparing prices across platforms and calculating margins. Example: Scrape supplier prices on AliExpress vs retail prices on Amazon to find 50%+ margin products. ### 3. Market Research & Analysis Analyze pricing trends, seasonal variations, and market positioning across your category. Example: Track 100 products in your niche weekly to identify pricing strategies and market gaps. ### 4. Price Drop Alerts Get notified when products drop below your target price for purchasing or repricing. Example: Monitor wishlist items and trigger alerts when prices drop 20% or more. ### 5. Stock Availability Monitoring Track when out-of-stock items come back in stock to capitalize on demand. Example: Monitor limited-edition products and get instant alerts when they're restocked. ## 🛠️ Integration Ideas ### Price Tracking Dashboard Export data to Google Sheets or Excel for visualization: - Price history charts - Competitor comparison tables - Stock availability timeline ### Automated Repricing System Connect to your e-commerce platform API: 1. Scrape competitor prices 2. Calculate optimal price (competitor avg - 5%) 3. Update your product prices via API 4. Track conversion rate impact ### Price Alert System Set up webhooks to trigger notifications: - Slack/Discord alerts for price changes - Email notifications for price drops - SMS alerts for critical updates ### Data Analysis Pipeline Feed data into analytics tools: - Historical price tracking in PostgreSQL - Trend analysis with Python/R - Machine learning for price prediction ## 📊 Best Practices ### Rate Limiting - Use delaySeconds: 2-5 for reliable scraping - Respect platform robots.txt - Monitor for 403/429 errors ### Proxy Usage - Enable Apify proxy (automatic in Apify Cloud) - Use residential IPs for best results - Rotate proxies for high-volume scraping ### Data Quality - Validate prices (check for null/zero values) - Handle currency conversions - Store timestamps for price history - Monitor scraper accuracy regularly ### Cost Optimization - Scrape only changed products (delta updates) - Use appropriate schedules (not all products need hourly updates) - Set maxProducts limit for testing - Disable includeImages if not needed ## 🔍 Supported Platforms ### Amazon - ✅ Amazon.com (US) - ✅ Amazon.co.uk (UK) - ✅ Amazon.de (Germany) - ✅ Amazon.fr (France) - ✅ Amazon.ca (Canada) - ✅ All other Amazon domains Supported data: Price, title, ASIN, brand, ratings, reviews, availability, images ### eBay - ✅ eBay.com (US) - ✅ eBay.co.uk (UK) - ✅ eBay.de (Germany) - ✅ All other eBay domains Supported data: Price, title, condition, seller, availability, images ### Shopify - ✅ Any store using Shopify platform - ✅ Custom domains with Shopify backend - ✅ Shopify Plus stores Supported data: Price, title, availability, images, variants ### Generic E-commerce - ✅ WooCommerce stores - ✅ Magento stores - ✅ Custom e-commerce sites Supported data: Basic product info via Open Graph meta tags ## ⚡ Performance - Speed: ~3-5 seconds per product - Reliability: 95%+ success rate with proxies - Scale: 1000+ products per run - Cost: ~$0.10-0.50 per 100 products ## 🚨 Common Issues & Solutions ### Issue: Getting 403 Forbidden Errors Solution: - Enable Apify proxy - Increase delaySeconds to 3-5 - Check if platform allows scraping ### Issue: Missing Price Data Solution: - Some products may not have prices (out of stock, variants) - Check in_stock field - Enable debugMode to see detailed logs ### Issue: Slow Performance Solution: - Reduce maxProducts for testing - Use headless mode (headless: true) - Run on Apify Cloud for better infrastructure ### Issue: Old/Cached Prices Solution: - Prices are scraped in real-time (not cached) - Check scraped_at timestamp - Some platforms may show cached data ## 📈 Pricing This actor runs on Apify platform with pay-as-you-go pricing: - Development: Free tier (trial accounts) - Production: ~$0.25 per 1000 product pages - Enterprise: Custom pricing for high-volume Cost breakdown: - Compute: $0.20 per GB-hour - Proxy: $0.50 per GB (optional but recommended) - Storage: Free up to 1GB ## 🔗 Related Actors Check out my other data extraction tools: - Reddit Scraper - Scrape Reddit posts and comments - Newsletter Scraper - Scrape Substack, Beehiiv & Ghost newsletters More scrapers coming soon! Follow @benthepythondev for updates. ## 📝 Legal & Ethics Important: This actor is for legitimate business purposes only. ✅ Allowed: - Monitoring your own product prices - Public competitive intelligence - Market research - Price comparison services ❌ Not Allowed: - Scraping copyrighted content - Violating terms of service - DDoS or excessive requests - Unauthorized data reselling Always: - Check platform terms of service - Use reasonable rate limits - Respect robots.txt - Store data securely This actor scrapes publicly available data only. Users are responsible for complying with applicable laws and platform terms. ## 🤝 Support Need help? Found a bug? Have a feature request? - 📧 Email: support@benthepythondev.com - 💬 Issues: GitHub Issues - 📚 Documentation: Apify Docs ## 🎉 Get Started Now 1. Click Try for free to test with a few products 2. Set up scheduled runs for automatic monitoring 3. Export data to your preferred format (CSV, JSON, Excel) 4. Integrate with your pricing tools via API Pro tip: Start with 5-10 products to test, then scale up once you're confident in the results! --- Built with ❤️ by @benthepythondev | Powered by Apify Keywords: price monitoring, e-commerce scraper, Amazon scraper, eBay scraper, Shopify scraper, competitive intelligence, price tracking, dynamic pricing, market research, dropshipping tools