Municibid Government Surplus Auction Scraper

Scrape Municibid.com — the online marketplace where U.S. government agencies (cities, counties, school districts, police & fire departments) sell surplus vehicles, equipment, and supplies at auction. Browse all active listings, filter by category / ZIP radius / seller agency, search by keyword, sort by price or ending time, or look up specific listings by ID — with full detail per item including description, condition, seller, current bid, bid count, auction end time, and photos. No login, no cookies, no API key required.

What this actor does

• Browse & search every active (or completed) auction listing on Municibid
• 32 official categories — Automotive, Heavy Equipment, Police & Fire, Tractors, Trailers, and more
• Location radius search — center on a ZIP code and a mile radius
• Seller/agency filter — pull every listing from one government agency
• 8 sort orders — ending soonest, newest, price, bid count, title
• Direct lookup by listing ID or URL
• Full item detail per listing — description, condition, seller, item location, current bid, bid count, auction end time, and photo gallery
• Empty fields are omitted from every record

Output per listing

• listingId, title, url
• description, category, categoryUrl, condition (New / Used / Refurbished / Damaged)
• sellerName, sellerSlug, sellerUrl — the government agency running the auction
• city, state, zipCode — approximate item location (based on the seller's ZIP)
• currentBid, currency, bidCount, highBidderMasked (partially-masked username, e.g. K*******n), reserveStatus (No Reserve / Reserve Price Met / Reserve Price Not Met)
• status — active or ended
• auctionStartTime, auctionEndTime — ISO 8601 UTC timestamps
• pageViews — listing page view count at time of scrape
• thumbnailUrl, imageUrls[], imageCount
• recordType: "listing", scrapedAt

currentBid, bidCount, and auctionEndTime are live, time-of-scrape snapshots — Municibid auctions update continuously, so re-running the actor against the same listing will return the current values at that moment, not a fixed price. This is expected behavior, not a data-quality issue.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	browse	browse (search/filter listings) or byListingId (direct lookup)
searchQuery	string	–	Keyword search, e.g. truck, mower (mode=browse)
category	select	All categories	One of Municibid's 32 categories (mode=browse)
sortBy	select	Ending soonest	Ending soonest / Newest / Price low-high / Price high-low / Most bids / Title A-Z / Title Z-A / Preview
status	select	Active auctions	Active or completed auctions
zipCode	string	–	Center ZIP for a radius search (pair with milesRadius)
milesRadius	int	100	Radius in miles from zipCode (5–1000)
seller	string	–	Exact seller/agency slug (from a listing's sellerSlug field)
minCurrentBid	int	–	Drop listings below this current bid (USD)
maxCurrentBid	int	–	Drop listings above this current bid (USD)
minBidCount	int	–	Drop listings with fewer bids than this
maxBidCount	int	–	Drop listings with more bids than this
condition	select	Any	Filter to New / Used / Refurbished / Damaged
listingIds	array	–	Listing IDs or URLs to fetch directly (mode=byListingId)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000)

Example: browse all active listings, ending soonest

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: search vehicles in the Automotive category

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "category": "C160883",
  "searchQuery": "truck",
  "sortBy": "2",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: listings within 50 miles of a ZIP code

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "zipCode": "60601",
  "milesRadius": 50,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: all listings from one seller agency

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "seller": "CityofFarmingtonILPD",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: direct lookup by listing ID

{
  "mode": "byListingId",
  "listingIds": ["83611256", "84094594"]
}

Use cases

• Government surplus resellers — track new vehicle/equipment listings across agencies
• Auction aggregators — feed Municibid listings into a broader auction search product
• Price research — monitor current bid trends for a category over time
• Fleet buyers — find surplus vehicles from police/fire/municipal fleets near a location
• Deal alerting — filter by category + max bid to surface underpriced listings

FAQ

Is this affiliated with Municibid? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that reads Municibid's public, unauthenticated auction pages.

Do I need an account or cookies to use this? No. Municibid's browse and listing pages are fully public.

Why do currentBid and bidCount change between runs? Because they're live auction data. Each run captures a snapshot at the moment of the request.

Why does a keyword search sometimes return listings that don't match my query? Municibid's own search falls back to showing other active listings when a query has no matches, rather than returning an empty page — this is upstream site behavior, not an actor bug.

Why do zipCode + milesRadius need to be set together? Municibid's location filter only takes effect when both a center ZIP and a radius are supplied; a ZIP alone (or radius alone) is ignored by the site.

How do I filter by a specific agency? Copy the sellerSlug value from any listing you've already scraped (e.g. CityofFarmingtonILPD) into the seller input field.

Are minCurrentBid / maxCurrentBid applied by Municibid or by the actor? By the actor, after fetching each listing — Municibid's own price-range filter does not reliably narrow results server-side.