OLX Pakistan Scraper: New Listing & Price Alerts

Watch a search, get only what's new. This actor runs your search against OLX Pakistan's own search-results pages — the country's largest classifieds marketplace — and returns one clean row per listing: title, price, city, category, condition, and a permanent link. Turn on monitoring and it becomes a watchlist: new listings and price drops since your last run, charged per new row, free on quiet days. Schedule it hourly and send the results to WhatsApp, Discord, Google Sheets, or n8n.

Who it's for

A phone reseller in Lahore or Karachi watching a model for underpriced stock, a used-car buyer tracking a specific make and city for a fresh listing before anyone else sees it, or a market- research team pricing a product category on OLX Pakistan gets a live feed of what's actually posted right now, without refreshing the search page by hand. There is no dedicated OLX Pakistan actor on the Apify Store today — the closest options are multi-country OLX actors that don't focus on this market or offer monitoring — and the demand this replaces is visible on GitHub, where developers have hand-built WhatsApp alert bots against this exact site because nothing off-the-shelf does it.

Why this one

• Monitoring first, not a one-off dump. Turn on "Only return results that are new, or dropped in price" and this actor becomes a watchlist: it remembers every listing ID it has already shown you, and only bills you for what's actually new or has dropped in price since the last run. A quiet run — nothing new, nothing cheaper — still finishes and costs only the base run fee.
• Reads OLX Pakistan's own server-rendered listing data, the same JSON its search pages embed for every visitor — not text scraped off rendered HTML — so price, location, category and condition are exact, typed values, not guessed from a page layout that can change.
• Never charged for a miss, or a quiet monitoring run. A search that finds nothing, or a scheduled watchlist run where nothing changed, still gets a row explaining what happened — and costs nothing.
• Paste a keyword or your own saved search URL. Type plain keywords, or paste an OLX Pakistan search-results URL you've already filtered on the site — sorting and page carry straight through.
• Flags sponsored rows honestly. OLX Pakistan mixes a handful of injected product ads into ordinary search results (see the FAQ). This actor marks them sponsored: true instead of quietly passing them off as real seller listings.

What you get

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

query	found	status	searchQuery	listingCount	totalAvailable	truncated	newCount	priceDropCount	monitorStatus	listings	listingId	title	price	currency	postedAt	updatedAt	city	area	category	condition	isFeatured	sponsored	sellerVerified	imageUrl	photoCount	description	changeType	isNew	previousPrice	priceDropPct	firstSeenAt	url	scrapedAt
iphone	true	OK							<monitoring status (quiet / seeded runs)>	<all listings found (full list)>			<price (pkr)>					<area / neighbourhood>			<is this a featured/boosted ad?>	<sponsored product ad (not a real seller listing)>					<new / price-drop / seen>	<is this listing new?>	<previous price (pkr)>	<price drop %>			1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Field	Type	Description
query	text	The search you submitted, echoed back
found	boolean	true if OLX Pakistan returned a real search-results page for this search
status	text	OK on a match; NOT_FOUND, BLOCKED, or BAD_FORMAT on a miss
message	text	Plain-English reason for a miss — only present when found is false
searchQuery	text	The keyword actually searched (parsed out of a pasted URL, if you gave one)
listingCount	number	Listings returned and billed for this search
totalAvailable	number	Total listings OLX Pakistan reports matching this search, including ones not returned
truncated	boolean	true if more results existed than were returned
newCount	number	New listings this run (monitoring only)
priceDropCount	number	Price drops this run (monitoring only)
monitorStatus	text	NO_NEW_ROWS on a quiet monitoring run, WATCHLIST_SEEDED on a silent first run, otherwise empty
listingId	text	OLX Pakistan's own numeric listing ID
title	text	Listing title
price	number	Price in PKR, or empty on a genuine "call for price" ad with no fixed number
currency	text	PKR, or empty alongside an empty price
postedAt	date	When the ad was first posted
updatedAt	date	When the ad was last bumped or edited
city	text	City, from OLX's own location hierarchy
area	text	Neighbourhood / area, when OLX's hierarchy has one
category	text	Full category path, e.g. "Mobiles > Mobile Phones"
condition	text	New, Used, or empty when the category has no condition field
isFeatured	boolean	true for a paid featured/boosted ad (these are pinned above the newest-first order)
sponsored	boolean	true for an injected product ad, not a real classifieds seller — see the FAQ
sellerVerified	boolean	OLX's own seller-verification flag
imageUrl	text (link)	First listing image
photoCount	number	Number of photos on the ad
description	text	The ad's description, with contact details redacted
changeType	text	new, price-drop, or seen (monitoring only)
isNew	boolean	true on this listing's first appearance (monitoring only)
previousPrice	number	The price last recorded for this listing, when it dropped (monitoring only)
priceDropPct	number	Percentage drop from the previous recorded price (monitoring only)
firstSeenAt	date	When this watchlist first saw this listing (monitoring only)
url	text (link)	Permanent listing link
scrapedAt	date	When this row was fetched

Deselect any field in the Input tab's column picker to drop it from every row — query, found, status, message, and scrapedAt always stay.

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" and a search line becomes a watchlist instead of a one-off dump:

• A listing counts as new the first time its OLX Pakistan listing ID is returned by this watchlist.
• A listing counts as a price drop when its price falls by at least "Minimum price drop" (5% by default) since it was last seen — measured against the most recently seen price, so a listing that drops twice is compared against its latest price each time, not its original one.
• Already-seen, unchanged listings are dropped before you're billed. A quiet run — nothing new, nothing cheaper — still finishes and returns one free row with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_ROWS.
• The first run has nothing to compare against. By default it returns everything it finds as "new". Turn on "Seed silently" to instead have the first run bank everything quietly with zero rows and zero charge, and start alerting from the second run on.
• Sort is always OLX's own newest-first order (sorting=date_desc), so two runs of the same watchlist are always comparing the same ordering — featured/boosted ads are pinned above it by OLX itself and still counted like any other listing.

Schedule recipe. Save this actor as an Apify Task with deltaMode: true and a deltaName you choose, add an hourly (or daily) Schedule, and point the task's webhook at Discord, Slack, Google Sheets, or an n8n/Make webhook URL to get pinged only when something actually changes.

Price-drop window limitation. A price drop is only ever seen while the listing is still inside what a run actually fetches — if a listing falls out of your maxListingsPerSearch window or your price filters between runs, this actor has no way to notice it dropped. Keep searches reasonably narrow (a specific model, a tight category or city) rather than one huge catch-all if price-drop coverage matters to you.

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~olx-pakistan-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"searches":["iphone"]}'
   

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. Turn on "Only return results that are new, or dropped in price" under Monitoring once you want a watchlist instead of a one-off dump — see "Monitoring / only new results" above.

Input

{
  "searches": [
    "iphone"
  ]
}

One per line — plain keywords (e.g. "iphone", "honda city") or a full search-results URL copied from olx.com.pk, including any filters it already has. No login required. Accepted formats: iphone, honda city, https://www.olx.com.pk/items/q-iphone?sorting=date_desc.

Sample output

See the table under "What you get" above for field-by-field detail. A search that finds nothing comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged. A quiet monitoring run comes back as a row with "found": true, "monitorStatus": "NO_NEW_ROWS" and is also 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~olx-pakistan-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searches":["iphone"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~olx-pakistan-listing-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"searches":["iphone"]} (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~olx-pakistan-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 "OLX Pakistan Scraper | Apify" — the agent will find and run this actor.

For monitoring, point the Task's webhook (Console → your Task → Webhooks) at a Discord or Slack incoming-webhook URL, a WhatsApp automation, or an n8n/Make workflow's own webhook trigger, so new listings and price drops land wherever you actually work.

Tips

• Start monitoring with "Seed silently" on for any watchlist you're setting up on a schedule — it avoids a wall of "new" alerts for your entire current search result on day one.
• Keep a monitored search reasonably narrow (a model, a tight category, a city) — see "Price-drop window limitation" above for why a huge catch-all search misses price drops on listings that fall outside what gets fetched.
• Filter out sponsored product ads with sponsored: false in Advanced → columns/keyword filters if you only want real classifieds sellers.
• A BLOCKED status means OLX Pakistan didn't serve a normal page — lowering "Max concurrency" or trying again shortly usually clears it; this actor doesn't need a proxy by default.
• Paste your own already-filtered OLX Pakistan search URL instead of using the "Category"/"Location" fields if you need both narrowed at once — see the FAQ.

vs. OLX Pakistan's own alerts, and vs. the multi-country OLX actors

OLX Pakistan has no built-in "notify me" feature for a saved search at all — buyers currently solve this with hand-built tools like GitHub's yogasw/OLX-Crawler, a WhatsApp bot covering OLX Pakistan, India and Indonesia. On the Apify Store, the closest options are multi-country OLX actors (the largest, crawlerbros, has 54 lifetime users across several OLX markets) — none of them focus on Pakistan specifically or offer new-listing/price-drop monitoring as a mode.

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor	Pay per listing returned; nothing for a miss or a quiet monitoring run	OLX Pakistan only, monitoring mode (new + price drop), city/category/condition, sponsored-row flag	Combining Category and Location filters at once isn't confirmed — paste a filtered URL instead
Multi-country OLX actors	Varies	Broad OLX coverage across several countries	No Pakistan-specific monitoring; a one-off dump, not a watchlist
Doing it yourself	Your time to build and maintain a scraper, a seen-listing store, and a price-tracking layer	The same data	This actor's window.state parsing, monitoring state, and redaction are the maintenance burden it absorbs

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 an anonymous sellerHash so you can group listings by seller without a name, plus OLX's own verification flag. Contact-info-like strings (emails, phone numbers, WhatsApp/Telegram links) inside a listing's description are redacted to [redacted]. Turning on "Include raw seller info" makes you responsible for having a lawful reason to process the raw seller ID it then adds. Seller phone numbers and emails are never collected. Not affiliated with OLX / EMPG.

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 OLX Pakistan's terms and your local law.

FAQ

Why is a row empty, or why does found say false? Either the input line was blank (status: BAD_FORMAT), OLX Pakistan returned a block page (status: BLOCKED), or the search matched nothing right now (status: NOT_FOUND). Check the message column for the specific reason. None of these are billed.

Am I charged for a quiet monitoring run? No. When monitoring finds nothing new and no price drops, you get one row with monitorStatus: NO_NEW_ROWS and listingCount: 0 — billing only fires when listingCount is greater than zero.

What are the sponsored: true rows? OLX Pakistan mixes a handful of injected product ads into ordinary search results — they carry a non-standard listing ID (prefixed "ev") and no real seller behind them, unlike an ordinary classifieds ad. This actor includes them (OLX itself returns them for the query) but marks them so you can filter them out.

Why is price sometimes empty? OLX Pakistan's own search API returns 0 for every listing's headline price field — the real number lives in a separate per-category field this actor reads instead. A genuine "call for price" ad (no fixed number anywhere) comes through with price and currency both empty rather than a fabricated zero.

Can I filter by both Category and Location at once? Not through this actor's own input fields — only one is confirmed to work as a plain URL path, so setting both applies Location only (logged once in the run's log). Paste the exact filtered search URL you get from browsing olx.com.pk yourself instead; its path carries through unchanged.

Do I need to configure proxies? No. This actor uses Apify's default proxy configuration out of the box — OLX Pakistan's Cloudflare doesn't challenge plain requests from Apify's datacenter IPs. A per-request RESIDENTIAL Pakistan fallback kicks in automatically only if a request gets blocked.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. It's registered on the Apify MCP server — an agent in Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client can find and run it by name ("OLX Pakistan Scraper | Apify"), or you can call the REST endpoint shown above from any script or workflow tool.

Related actors

• Zameen Scraper — the same platform family (EMPG / Dubizzle Group), for Pakistan's largest property portal.
• dubizzle Egypt Scraper — the same platform family's Egypt classifieds site.