iScrap App Metal Prices Scraper

Scrape daily scrap metal prices from iScrap App — today's top prices for copper, aluminum, brass, steel, insulated wire, batteries, and more, the full 200+ metal directory by category, and per-metal detail pages with recent price reports submitted by individual scrap yards across the US and Canada. No login, no cookies, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: topPrices (today's most-searched metals with live pricing), browse (the full metal directory by category), metalDetail (per-metal price + recent yard reports)
• US & Canada markets — country filter, prices differ by region
• Category browsing — Non-Ferrous Materials, Ferrous Materials, Electronics
• Recent price reports — actual prices reported by named scrap yards with city/state and date, straight from each metal's detail page
• Related metals, description, educational video, and photos on detail pages
• Filters — keyword (metal name), price unit (lb/ton/each), min/max price
• Empty fields are always omitted from output

Output per record

Fields vary slightly by mode (unused fields are omitted, never emitted as null/empty):

• metalName, metalSlug, metalUrl, imageUrl
• price (display string, e.g. "$4.59/lb"), priceValue (float), priceUnit (lb/ton/each)
• changePercent / change45DayPercent, changeDirection (up/down) — topPrices mode reports the change shown on the homepage; metalDetail mode reports the page's own labeled "45-Day Change"
• lastUpdated — freshness label the metal's own detail page displays (e.g. "Today", "3 days ago", "1 year ago") (mode=metalDetail)
• materialId — internal iScrap App material ID (mode=topPrices)
• category — only present when a specific category filter was requested (mode=browse)
• description — metal description / usage guide text
• recentPriceReports[] — {price, priceValue, priceUnit, location, reportedDate, yardUrl} (mode=metalDetail)
• relatedMetals[] — {metalName, metalUrl, metalSlug, price, priceValue, priceUnit} (mode=metalDetail)
• videoUrl, photos[] (mode=metalDetail, when available)
• country — US or CA
• recordType — topMetalPrice / metalListing / metalDetail
• scrapedAt — UTC ISO timestamp

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	topPrices	topPrices / browse / metalDetail
metalSlugs	array	–	Metal slugs or full URLs (mode=metalDetail)
category	string	all	all / non-ferrous-materials / ferrous-materials / electronics (mode=browse)
country	string	US	US or CA (mode=topPrices, metalDetail)
keyword	string	–	Case-insensitive substring match on metal name (mode=topPrices, browse)
unitFilter	string	any	any / lb / ton / each (mode=topPrices)
minPrice	number	–	Minimum price in the metal's own display unit (mode=topPrices)
maxPrice	number	–	Maximum price in the metal's own display unit (mode=topPrices)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on records returned (1–1000)

Example: today's top prices in Canada, copper only

{
  "mode": "topPrices",
  "country": "CA",
  "keyword": "copper"
}

Example: browse the full Electronics directory

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "category": "electronics",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: detail + recent yard reports for specific metals

{
  "mode": "metalDetail",
  "metalSlugs": ["1-bare-bright-copper-wire", "shreddable-steel", "yellow-brass"],
  "country": "US"
}

Use cases

• Scrap yard owners / recyclers — track daily market rates for the metals you buy
• Individual scrappers — decide which materials are worth collecting today
• Price-comparison tools — feed live per-lb/per-ton rates into a pricing dashboard
• Market research — monitor 200+ metal categories and their descriptions/grades
• Regional analysis — compare US vs Canada pricing on the same metal

Limitations

• mode=topPrices mirrors the iScrap App homepage's curated "most popular" list — currently 15 metals. For the full 200+ metal catalog, use mode=browse (names/descriptions) combined with mode=metalDetail (price) for the specific metals you need.
• mode=browse listing pages do not include price — iScrapApp's directory pages are metadata-only; fetch mode=metalDetail for pricing on any given metal.
• Sparkline/trend-chart pixel data shown on the site is not exposed as a field: without accompanying timestamps the underlying values aren't independently meaningful, so we only surface the labeled changePercent / change45DayPercent figures the site itself publishes.
• recentPriceReports reflects whichever individual yard reports the site currently has surfaced for that metal (crowd-submitted); it is not a statistically representative sample of every yard.
• iScrapApp.com's Cloudflare protection returns a challenge page to requests without a normal browser User-Agent header (a bare curl with no UA gets a 403). All metalUrl / page links resolve with a normal browser UA (exactly what this actor sends); direct image asset URLs (imageUrl) work with any client, no UA needed.

FAQ

Is this actor free to run? Yes — no proxy, no cookies, no API key. Plain HTTP requests to public pages.

Why do topPrices and metalDetail sometimes show different change percentages for the same metal? The homepage's percent badge and the detail page's "45-Day Change" are computed over different windows/rounding by the source site; both are reported faithfully as-is (changePercent vs change45DayPercent).

What does priceUnit: "each" mean? Some materials (e.g. catalytic converters) are priced per item rather than per pound or per ton — iScrap App displays these as $X/each.

Can I get prices for a metal that isn't in the top-15 list? Yes — use mode=browse to find its slug (or copy it from the metal's URL), then run mode=metalDetail with that slug.

How fresh is the data? iScrap App updates its prices daily based on market demand and yard-submitted reports. On mode=metalDetail, the lastUpdated field mirrors the page's own freshness label (e.g. "Today") so you can tell at a glance whether a given metal's price was just refreshed or hasn't moved in a while.