# Chemist Warehouse Price & Promo Change Monitor (`datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor`) Actor

Watch Chemist Warehouse products and get ONLY the changes: price rises/drops, promo (RRP / catalogue flag) movements and availability. Schedule daily and feed alerts, repricing or brand price-compliance checks.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Daniel Matthee](https://apify.com/datadeltas) (community)
- **Categories:**
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $8.40 / 1,000 change detecteds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Chemist Warehouse Price & Promo Change Monitor

Watch any set of Chemist Warehouse (chemistwarehouse.com.au) products and get
**only the changes**: price rises and drops, promo movements (RRP changes and
catalogue-promo flags — the raw signals behind CW's "1/2 Price" and "% OFF RRP"
badges) and availability flips. Schedule it daily and pipe the change feed into
alerts, repricing, or brand price-compliance reporting.

Chemist Warehouse is Australia's dominant pharmacy retailer and its aggressive
half-price catalogue cycles move the whole health & beauty market. One-shot
scrapers give you a snapshot; this monitor tells you **what changed since
yesterday** — which is the question price-intel teams, health & beauty brands
and resellers actually ask.

- **First run** seeds a baseline and emits nothing (clearly logged).
- **Every later run** emits one dataset record per changed field, nothing else.
- State lives in a named key-value store, so runs are independent and cheap.

### Example change record

```json
{
  "sku": "2477821",
  "name": "NIVEA Rich Nourishing Body Lotion 400ml",
  "field": "price",
  "oldValue": 9.99,
  "newValue": 5.99,
  "productUrl": "https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml",
  "detectedAt": "2026-08-31T01:46:46Z"
}
```

`field` is one of `price` (AUD), `promo` or `availability`
(`in_stock` / `out_of_stock` / `unavailable` — the latter emitted once when a
product disappears from the site).

`promo` values are captured **raw** as the site publishes them:

```json
{ "rrpCents": 1000, "flags": ["in_catalogue"] }
```

`rrpCents` is the RRP in cents (price vs RRP is exactly how CW computes its
"1/2 Price" and "% OFF RRP" badges) and `flags` is the raw product-flag list
(`in_catalogue`, `exclusive`, …). No interpretation is applied, so your rules
stay yours.

### Input

| Field | Type | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| `watchUrls` | array | – | CW product page URLs (`…/buy/<id>/<slug>`) |
| `watchQueries` | array | – | Search terms; every product returned joins the watch list |
| `maxItems` | integer | 500 | Cap on change records emitted per run |
| `maxProductsPerQuery` | integer | 25 | Products each query may add (max 100) |
| `stateStoreName` | string | `chemist-warehouse-monitor-state` | Use different names for independent watch lists |
| `proxyConfiguration` | object | AU residential | The monitor talks to CW's public search API; the default is the safe choice |

Note: Chemist Warehouse pricing is national (no per-store prices), so there is
no store selector — one clean feed per product.

### Use cases

1. **Brand price compliance** — a health & beauty brand watches
   `watchQueries: ["nivea"]` daily and gets alerted the moment CW discounts
   below MAP or a product enters the half-price catalogue (`in_catalogue`
   flag appears, RRP gap widens).
2. **Reseller buying signals** — a reseller watches high-velocity lines
   (`watchQueries: ["panadol", "blackmores", "swisse"]`) and buys stock the
   day a deep price drop lands, before the catalogue crowd.
3. **Price intelligence feeds** — an analytics team watches competitor SKU
   URLs and ingests the change feed into their warehouse; only deltas arrive,
   so the pipeline stays tiny.

### Pricing events

- Actor start: $0.005 per run
- Item checked: $0.0002 per product per run
- Change detected: $0.012 per change record

A daily watch of 100 products costs about $0.025/run plus a cent per change —
you pay for signal, not for pages.

### Update promise

The monitor uses the retailer's own product-search backend (fast, stable,
JSON). If Chemist Warehouse changes its storefront, the actor logs a clear
schema-drift warning instead of crashing, and fixes ship promptly — monitors
are only useful when they keep running.

### Changelog

- **0.1** (2026-08-31) — Initial release: price / promo / availability change
  feed, named-KV baseline, first-run seeding, maxItems cap, AU residential
  proxy default.

# Actor input Schema

## `watchUrls` (type: `array`):

Chemist Warehouse product page URLs, e.g. https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml.

## `watchQueries` (type: `array`):

Chemist Warehouse search terms (brand names work well, e.g. "nivea", "panadol"). Every product returned for each query (up to Max products per query) is added to the watch list.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Cap on change records emitted in one run. Keeps test runs and first big diffs cheap.

## `maxProductsPerQuery` (type: `integer`):

How many products each search query may add to the watch list.

## `stateStoreName` (type: `string`):

Named key-value store holding the last-seen baseline. Use different names to run independent watch lists.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

The monitor talks to Chemist Warehouse's public Algolia search API, which is proxy-tolerant; Australian residential proxies are the safe default.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "watchUrls": [
    "https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml"
  ],
  "watchQueries": [],
  "maxItems": 500,
  "maxProductsPerQuery": 25,
  "stateStoreName": "chemist-warehouse-monitor-state",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "AU"
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `records` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "watchUrls": [
        "https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml"
    ],
    "watchQueries": [],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ],
        "apifyProxyCountry": "AU"
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "watchUrls": ["https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml"],
    "watchQueries": [],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": True,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
        "apifyProxyCountry": "AU",
    },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "watchUrls": [
    "https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/6631/nivea-rich-nourishing-body-lotion-moisturiser-48h-400ml"
  ],
  "watchQueries": [],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
      "RESIDENTIAL"
    ],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "AU"
  }
}' |
apify call datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,datadeltas/chemist-warehouse-monitor"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/pAEJtAoIhcaB55MZB/builds/kSexPUfw83xYkMbFQ/openapi.json