Mercari Japan Scraper: New Listings & Sold Prices

Watch a search, get only what's new. This actor runs your search on Mercari Japan (jp.mercari.com), Japan's biggest flea-market app, and returns one clean row per listing: title, JPY price, condition, brand, status, seller type and a permanent link. Switch to sold mode and the same search becomes a price-comps feed: what things actually sold for, most recently sold first. Turn on monitoring and it becomes a watchlist: new listings, new sales and price drops since your last run, charged per new row, free on quiet days.

Who it's for

Resellers and importers who price by what sold last week, not by asking prices. Proxy-buying and export shops sourcing trading cards, games, cameras and fashion from Japan. Market researchers who need a bulk export of a Mercari search in a spreadsheet, and n8n, Make or Sheets workflows that act the moment a new listing appears. Paste a list of searches (Japanese or English keywords, or a search URL copied from your browser), get back a flat row per listing, and pay only for listings returned. A search that finds nothing costs nothing.

Mercari already sends its own app alerts to individual buyers. This actor is for the jobs the app doesn't do: sold-price comps in bulk, a structured export, and monitoring many searches at once on your own schedule.

Why this one

• Sold price comps built in. Set "Listing type" to Sold and you get items that already sold (or are mid-transaction), most recently sold first, with the price they went for. Combine with monitoring for a running log of every new sale in a search.
• Monitoring first, not a one-off dump. It remembers every item ID it has shown you and only bills what's new or cheaper since the last run. A quiet run costs only the run fee.
• Mercari's own filters, not an approximation. Condition, category, brand and price are sent to Mercari's search as Mercari's own filters, so a price cap is applied before you pay, not after.
• Readable condition labels. Mercari's six condition grades come back as an ID plus an English and a Japanese label (新品、未使用 through 全体的に状態が悪い), taken from Mercari's own filter UI.
• Private or business seller. Mercari Shops listings (business sellers) are flagged sellerType: business and link to their Shops page; ordinary C2C listings are private.
• Never charged for a miss or a quiet monitoring run.

What you get

One row per listing by default (turn off "Expand rows" in Advanced for one row per search, with the listings nested under listings).

Field	Type	Description
query	text	The search you submitted, echoed back
found	boolean	true if Mercari returned a search response
status	text	OK, or NOT_FOUND / BLOCKED / BAD_FORMAT on a miss
searchQuery	text	The keyword actually searched (read from a pasted URL if you gave one)
listingType	text	active, sold or all for this search
listingCount	number	Listings returned and billed for this search
totalAvailable	number	Matches Mercari reports (Mercari caps this figure at 15,000)
truncated	boolean	true if more results existed than were returned
newCount / priceDropCount	number	New listings and price drops this run (monitoring only)
listingId	text	Mercari item ID (m... for C2C, a longer ID for Mercari Shops)
url	link	jp.mercari.com/item/<id>, or jp.mercari.com/shops/product/<id> for Mercari Shops
title	text	Listing title
price	number	Price in JPY (for an auction listing, the current highest bid)
currency	text	Always JPY
listingStatus	text	on_sale, trading (bought, transaction in progress) or sold_out
conditionId	number	Mercari condition grade, 1 (new) to 6 (poor overall)
conditionName / conditionNameJa	text	The grade in English and in Mercari's Japanese wording
category	text	Mercari category ID
brand	text	Brand, when the seller tagged one
sellerType	text	business for Mercari Shops, otherwise private
shippingPaidBy	text	seller (送料込み) or buyer (着払い); empty for Mercari Shops
isAuction / auctionEndsAt	boolean / date	Mercari's auction-format listings and their bid deadline
postedAt	date	When the listing was created
updatedAt	date	Last status or price change; for sold items, roughly when it sold
imageUrl	link	First listing photo
sellerHash	text	Anonymous, stable hash of the seller ID
sellerId	text	Only with "Include raw seller ID" on
isNew, changeType, previousPrice, priceDropPct, firstSeenAt	mixed	Monitoring fields
scrapedAt	date	When this row was fetched

Pricing

Pay-per-event. A flat per-run fee covers session/proxy warmup; you're billed per item only when data is actually found and returned — see .actor/pay_per_event.json for exact prices. A miss is never charged.

Monitoring / only new results

Turn on "Only return results that are new or dropped in price since the last run" and a search line becomes a watchlist:

• A listing is new the first time this watchlist sees its Mercari item ID. In Sold mode that means newly sold since the last run.
• A price drop fires when a fixed-price, on-sale listing's price falls by at least "Minimum price drop" (5% by default). Auction bids and sold items never fire one.
• Already-seen, unchanged listings are dropped before billing. A quiet run returns one free row.
• The first run has nothing to compare against, so it returns everything as new. Turn on "Skip alerts on the first run" to bank the first run silently and start alerting from run two.

Schedule recipe. Save the actor as an Apify Task with deltaMode: true and your own deltaName, add an hourly or daily Schedule, and point the task's webhook at Slack, Discord, Google Sheets or an n8n / Make webhook.

Limitation. Each run reads up to 1,000 listings per search (newest first, 120 per page). A very busy keyword can post more than that between two runs, and a price drop is only seen on a listing that is still inside that window. Narrow busy searches with a category, brand or price cap, or schedule them more often.

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~mercari-jp-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"searches":["ポケモンカード"]}'
   

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.

4. For sold comps, set "Listing type" to Sold. For monitoring, turn on the Monitoring section.

Input

{
  "searches": [
    "ポケモンカード"
  ]
}

One search per line: keywords like "ポケモンカード" or "nintendo switch", or paste a jp.mercari.com search URL (its own filters for status, sort, condition, category, brand and price are kept). Accepted formats: ポケモンカード, nintendo switch, https://jp.mercari.com/search?keyword=iphone&status=sold_out%7Ctrading.

Pasted search URLs keep their own filters: status=on_sale or status=sold_out|trading, sort/order, item_condition_id, category_id, brand_id, price_min and price_max override the matching inputs for that one search.

Sample output

query	found	status	searchQuery	listingType	listingCount	totalAvailable	truncated	newCount	priceDropCount	listings	listingId	url	title	price	currency	listingStatus	conditionId	conditionName	conditionNameJa	category	brand	sellerType	shippingPaidBy	isAuction	auctionEndsAt	postedAt	updatedAt	imageUrl	sellerHash	sellerId	isNew	changeType	previousPrice	priceDropPct	firstSeenAt	scrapedAt
ポケモンカード	true	OK		<listing type (active / sold / all)>		<total matching on mercari (capped at 15,000)>				<all listings found (full list)>				<price (jpy)>		<status (on_sale / trading / sold_out)>	<condition id (1 best to 6 worst)>		<condition (japanese)>			<seller type (private / mercari shops business)>					<last updated (sold time for sold items)>		<seller (anonymous hash)>	<seller id (only with seller info on)>	<is this listing new?>		<previous price (jpy)>	<price drop %>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A search that finds nothing comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged.

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~mercari-jp-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searches":["ポケモンカード"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~mercari-jp-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"searches":["ポケモンカード"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~mercari-jp-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"searches":["{{search}}"]}, mapping the row's search into the searches array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "Mercari Japan Scraper: Sold Prices & New Listing Alerts" — the agent will find and run this actor.

Tips

• Price a card, lens or console by running the same keyword in Sold mode with a condition floor ("Like new or better"). The median of price over the last few dozen rows is a fair comp.
• totalAvailable reads 15,000 on any broad keyword: that is Mercari's own display cap, not a real count. Narrow the search if you need everything.
• Category and brand IDs are the numbers after category_id= and brand_id= in a jp.mercari.com search URL. Easiest path: set the filters on the site, then paste the URL as your search.
• A BLOCKED status means Mercari returned 401, 403, 429 or 503. Lower "Max concurrency" or retry later. No proxy is needed by default.

vs. other Mercari scrapers

The busiest Mercari Japan actor on the Apify Store (fatihtahta's) has about 30 monthly users and is a one-off search export. Japan Alerts is a paid external alert service across several Japanese platforms, and Mercari's own app alerts cover one buyer's saved searches.

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor	$2 per 1,000 listings; nothing for a miss or a quiet run	Sold comps mode, monitoring (new, newly sold, price drop), condition labels, seller type, up to 1,000 listings per search	No listing descriptions or seller location (Mercari's search doesn't return them)
Mercari app alerts	Free	Push alerts for your own saved searches	No export, no sold history in bulk, no automation
Paid alert services	Monthly subscription	Alerts across several platforms	Not your data pipeline

Data & privacy

This actor reads public search results that anyone can see without logging in. It doesn't log in, solve CAPTCHAs or reveal hidden contact details. Seller identity is off by default: you get a private/business flag and an anonymous seller hash so you can group listings by seller without names. Turning on seller info makes you responsible for having a lawful reason to process it. Not affiliated with Mercari.

Seller phone numbers and emails are never collected.

FAQ

Is this allowed? It collects the same public listing data your browser shows, for the searches you choose. It's built for monitoring a search, not for copying the marketplace. Check that your use fits Mercari's terms and your local law.

Does it need a Mercari account or login? No. Mercari's web client signs each search request with a key pair it generates itself (a "DPoP" proof). This actor does the same with a fresh key pair per run. No account, login or token is involved. If Mercari ever requires a login for search, the actor reports it instead of working around it.

What does trading mean in Sold mode? The item was bought and the transaction is still in progress. Mercari's own "sold" filter includes these, so this actor does too; filter them out on listingStatus if you only want completed sales.

Why is shippingPaidBy empty on some rows? Mercari Shops listings don't report who pays shipping in search results.

Am I charged for a quiet monitoring run? No. When nothing is new you get one row with listingCount: 0 and no listing charge.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. It's available through the Apify MCP server and the REST endpoint above.