AutoScout24 Price Drop Alert: Watch a Car Search or Link

This is a price monitor, not a car-search dump. Give it a make and model, a pasted AutoScout24 search link, or a list of individual listing links; put it on a schedule; and every run returns only the cars whose asking price has fallen since the last run — with the old price, the new price and the cut percentage on the row. A run where nothing got cheaper returns one summary row and costs you the start fee alone.

The general-purpose AutoScout24 Car Scraper can do this too, but it ships as a full-search scraper: you have to turn monitoring on, turn new listings off, pick a threshold, and then find the price change in a 34-column row. Here that is the default and the only thing the actor is shaped for. If you want everything an AutoScout24 search returns — every current car, full specs per listing, sold-signal and sell-through tracking — use the parent actor instead; it is listed under Related actors at the bottom.

Who it's for

• Private buyers with a shortlist. Paste the listing links of the five cars you are deciding between and hear the moment one of the sellers blinks.
• Dealers and traders watching a segment ("Volkswagen Golf, 2020+, under 50,000 km, Germany and Austria") for the reductions that mark a car that is not moving.
• Lead-gen and pricing teams who want price movement as a signal, one row per cut, in a spreadsheet or a warehouse rather than in a browser tab.

What this does that a plain car search doesn't

AutoScout24 shows you today's asking price. It cannot tell you that a car was EUR 24,900 last week and is EUR 22,400 now, because the page has no memory. This actor keeps one.

	Plain search	This actor
Rows you get back	every match, every run	only the cars that got cheaper
Old asking price	not available	previousPrice on the row
Size of the cut	you work it out	priceDropPct, and a minimum you set
Cost of a quiet run	you pay for every row again	start fee only
"How long has this been listed?"	not available	daysListed, firstSeenAt

How the price memory works

Each input line becomes a watchlist — whether it is a typed make and model, a pasted search link, or one listing link. The actor remembers every AutoScout24 listing ID and its asking price between runs, in your own account's storage.

1. First run. Nothing to compare with, so it returns a single summary row with monitorStatus: FIRST_RUN and remembers the prices it found. No cars, no charge.
2. Every run after. A car comes back only when its asking price has fallen by at least Smallest price cut worth an alert (1% by default) since it was last seen. The row carries previousPrice, the current price, priceDropPct and changeType: price-drop.
3. A quiet run. Nothing cheaper, so you get one row with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_ROWS and listingCount: 0.

The 1% default is deliberate: car prices move in small steps, and 1% of EUR 20,000 is EUR 200. Raise it on a broad search, lower it on a shortlist.

Two schedules with different filters keep separate memories, so they never overwrite each other. Give a Watchlist name to pin one memory across a filter change.

Want cars that are brand new to the search as well? Turn on Also return cars that are brand new to the search. They arrive as ordinary rows marked changeType: new.

Countries

Eight AutoScout24 country sites, one code per line: DE, AT, BE, ES, FR, IT, LU, NL. A typed make and model searches all the ones you list at once, newest first. A pasted search link keeps its own countries and filters, so the easiest way to watch something complicated is to build the search on autoscout24.de and paste the link.

What you get

One row per price cut:

• The cut — previousPrice, price, priceDropPct, currency, and AutoScout24's own priceRating so you can see whether the new price is actually a good one.
• The car — listingId, name, make, model, mileageKm, productionDate, fuelType, transmission, enginePowerHp, condition, image, url.
• The seller — sellerType (dealer or private), sellerName, city, country.
• The history — changeType, firstSeenAt, daysListed.
• The search — searchQuery, searchUrl, listingCount, priceDropCount, monitorStatus, medianPrice.

Price

$4 per 1,000 listings, plus a $0.00005 start fee. Misses (found:false) are never charged.

• Price cuts: $4 per 1,000 rows returned, plus a $0.00005 start fee per run.
• A quiet run costs the start fee only. Nothing cheaper means no rows, and no rows means no charge — even though the actor still fetched and compared every page.
• A search that returns nothing, or a country that refuses the run, is never billed.

Worked example. One watchlist on a 300-car segment, checked daily, where about 8 cars a day get cheaper: 8 × 30 = 240 rows a month, about $0.96 plus 30 start fees — roughly $0.96 a month. A shortlist of 5 listing links checked daily costs a few cents a month.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the searches field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~autoscout24-price-drop-alert/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"searches":["bmw 3er"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Tips:

• Paste the search link instead of typing a make and model when you need a filter this actor doesn't list (body type, gearbox, seller type, equipment). Everything in the link is kept.
• A shortlist is the cheapest watchlist there is. One line per listing link, checked daily: you pay only on the days a seller actually cuts a price.
• Raise the threshold on a broad search. Dealers nudge prices by EUR 50 to resurface a listing; 2 or 3% keeps that noise out.
• Daily is usually enough. Unlike consumer marketplaces, car prices are changed by dealers during working hours, not minute by minute.

Input

{
  "searches": [
    "bmw 3er"
  ]
}

One per line: a make and model such as "bmw 3er" or "volkswagen golf" (write them the way AutoScout24's own search link does), a search link copied from autoscout24.de or any AutoScout24 country site (all its filters are kept), or a single listing link to watch one car. Each line becomes a watchlist: the first run remembers the asking prices it finds, and every run after it returns only the cars that got cheaper. Searches always run newest first. Accepted formats: bmw 3er, mercedes-benz c-klasse, https://www.autoscout24.de/lst/volkswagen/golf?fregfrom=2020&kmto=50000&cy=D, https://www.autoscout24.de/angebote/