MAP Violation Monitor: Find Unauthorized Sellers & Price Cuts

What does MAP Violation Monitor do?

MAP Violation Monitor finds every public offer of your products that is advertised below your MAP (minimum advertised price) across Amazon, eBay, Best Buy and Newegg. You supply your products and the price you enforce; it returns one row per offending listing, with the advertised price, the shortfall, a graded severity, the seller where disclosed, and a direct link to the listing as evidence.

Every offer is put through an AI exact-match check against your product before it is flagged. This is what stops the false violations that make cheap MAP tools unusable: a $19 replacement cable, a refurbished unit, or a different colourway of your SKU will never be reported as someone breaking MAP on your $199 product.

Enterprise MAP platforms start around $300/month, require onboarding calls and multi-month contracts, and are built for brands with hundreds of retail partners. This runs on Apify with no contract, no minimum, and no catalogue upload: paste your products, run it, schedule it.

Why use this MAP monitoring and unauthorized seller tool?

• Catch MAP violations across channels you do not control. Your distributors' customers resell on eBay and Amazon; this is where MAP erosion actually happens.
• Identify unauthorized sellers. Supply your approved reseller list and any seller outside it is flagged.
• Build an enforcement evidence trail. Every row carries the listing URL, the advertised price and a UTC timestamp, which is what a notice needs.
• Get a new-violations digest on a schedule. Run it daily and the isNewViolation flag tells you what appeared since last time, instead of re-reading the same list.
• Protect channel relationships. Show a compliant partner the data proving the undercutting came from somewhere else.
• Price intelligence for distributors. See the real advertised floor for products you supply.

How to use MAP Violation Monitor

1. Click Try for free.
2. In Products and MAP prices, paste one product per line as IDENTIFIER, MAP_PRICE, for example B09HM94VDS, 99.99. The identifier can be an ASIN, UPC, model number or product name. It pastes straight from a spreadsheet.
3. Optionally add your Authorized sellers, one per line.
4. Tick Only output violations if you want just the offenders.
5. Click Start, then open the Output tab and export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.
6. Set a Schedule to run it daily and use the isNewViolation flag as your alert.

No proxy setup is required. AI matching uses Apify's built-in access; if your Apify plan cannot start public Actors, supply your own OpenRouter key instead.

Input

Field	What it does
products	One product per line as IDENTIFIER, MAP_PRICE. Required.
defaultMapPrice	MAP used for any line that carries no price of its own.
authorizedSellers	Your approved resellers. Anyone else is flagged as unauthorized.
onlyViolations	Return only offers below MAP, instead of every offer found.
marketplaces	Which of Amazon, eBay, Best Buy and Newegg to monitor.
model	The AI model that verifies each offer is your exact product.
zipCode	US delivery ZIP. Amazon advertises different prices by location.
concurrency	How many products to check at once.
openrouterApiKey	Optional. Use your own OpenRouter key instead of Apify's built-in access.
proxyConfiguration	Optional override. Paid runs already include a US residential network.

{
    "products": ["B0DGHMNQ5Z, 129.99", "Sony WH-1000XM5, 349.99"],
    "authorizedSellers": ["Best Buy", "B&H Photo"],
    "onlyViolations": true,
    "marketplaces": ["Amazon", "eBay", "BestBuy", "Newegg"]
}

Output

One row per offer. Download as JSON, HTML, CSV or Excel, or read it from the API.

{
    "input": "B09HM94VDS",
    "mapPrice": 99.99,
    "productTitle": "Logitech MX Master 3S Wireless Performance Mouse",
    "brand": "Logitech",
    "model": "910-006557",
    "upc": "097855174789",
    "marketplace": "eBay",
    "offerTitle": "Logitech MX Master 3S Wireless Mouse - Graphite - NEW SEALED",
    "offerUrl": "https://www.ebay.com/itm/298540509421",
    "offerPrice": 78.99,
    "seller": null,
    "isViolation": true,
    "shortfall": 21.0,
    "shortfallPercent": 21.0,
    "severity": "severe",
    "unauthorizedSeller": null,
    "isNewViolation": true,
    "checkedAt": "2026-07-31T14:02:11+00:00",
    "notes": null
}

Data fields

Field	Description
input	The product identifier you supplied.
mapPrice	The MAP you are enforcing for it.
productTitle, brand, model, upc	Resolved product identity used as the match reference.
marketplace	Where the offer was found.
offerTitle, offerUrl, offerPrice	The listing as advertised, and your evidence link.
seller	Seller name where the marketplace discloses it on the search page.
isViolation	True when advertised below your MAP.
shortfall, shortfallPercent	How far below MAP, in dollars and percent.
severity	none, minor (under 5%), moderate (5 to 15%), severe (over 15%).
unauthorizedSeller	True when the named seller is not on your authorized list.
isNewViolation	True the first time this listing is seen below MAP across runs.
checkedAt	UTC timestamp, for your audit trail.
notes	Coverage warnings, such as a marketplace that could not be reached.

Two null values mean something specific, and both are deliberate.

A seller of null means the marketplace did not disclose one on the search page. It never means the offer is first-party, and unauthorizedSeller stays null alongside it rather than guessing. Accusing a named reseller on data you do not have is the one error a brand cannot walk back.

A notes value naming an unreachable marketplace means that product was not fully checked. A product with a note is not a clean bill of health, and the Actor emits a row saying so rather than letting silence read as compliance.

How much does MAP monitoring cost?

You are charged per product checked, per offer found, and per violation flagged. A catalogue that is fully compliant costs only the checks and the offers; you pay the premium rate only when the Actor finds you something to act on.

AI model usage is billed separately by Apify's OpenRouter integration, not by this Actor, so you are never charged twice for the same call. Supply your own openrouterApiKey to move that usage to your own OpenRouter account.

Free plan runs are capped at 2 products per run and use Apify Proxy residential on your own account. Paid runs lift the cap and include a bundled US residential network at no extra cost. Upgrade your Apify plan to monitor a full catalogue.

Tips for MAP enforcement

• Use ASINs or UPCs, not product names. They resolve to exactly one SKU, so your MAP is compared against the right product.
• Run it on a daily schedule and filter on isNewViolation. That turns a full listing dump into a short actionable digest.
• Leave onlyViolations off for your first run. Seeing every offer tells you whether the matching is finding your product before you trust the violation count.
• Add your authorized sellers early. Without the list, unauthorizedSeller stays null on every row and you lose half the signal.
• Check notes before reporting "zero violations". A marketplace that could not be reached is a gap in coverage, not a clean result.
• A product reported as not found is confirmed, not assumed. Amazon serves 404s to exits it is throttling, so several separate exits must agree before a product in your catalogue is reported missing.
• Interrupted runs resume. Progress and the seen-violations history are checkpointed, so a migrated run continues where it stopped.

FAQ

What counts as a MAP violation here?

Any offer whose advertised price is below the MAP price you set for that product. The shortfall is reported in both dollars and percent, and graded minor, moderate or severe so you can triage.

How do you avoid false MAP violations?

Every candidate listing is checked by an AI model against your reference product and must match on brand, model and variant. Bundles, accessories, different variants and refurbished or open-box units are explicitly excluded. If that check cannot run for a marketplace, that marketplace reports nothing rather than a guess.

Which AI model should I pick?

The default, GPT-4o mini, was chosen by benchmarking candidates against real eBay result sets. It was the most precise at rejecting listings that are not your exact product, which is what keeps false violations out of your enforcement list. Cheaper models let noticeably more junk through, and a false violation is worse than a missed one.

Can it identify unauthorized sellers?

Yes, where the marketplace discloses the seller on its search page. Supply your authorized reseller list and any other named seller is flagged. Sellers that are not disclosed are left blank rather than accused.

How is this different from enterprise MAP software?

Same core job, without the $300 to $2,000 monthly floor, the multi-month contract, the onboarding call or the catalogue upload. You pay per check and per violation found, and you can run it once to see if you have a problem at all.

Does it monitor Amazon and eBay?

Yes, and that matters: those are where most MAP erosion actually happens, and several cheaper MAP tools cover only first-party retailers and miss them entirely.

Why are all my results empty with an "AI access unavailable" error?

Your Apify plan cannot start the public Actor that provides the built-in AI matching. Either upgrade your Apify plan, or fill the OpenRouter API key input to use your own OpenRouter account. Without one of the two, no offer can be verified and nothing can be flagged.

Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Use Apify's scheduler for daily or weekly runs and connect a webhook or integration to push new violations into Slack, Sheets, or your enforcement system.

Can an AI agent call this Actor?

Yes. It is callable from any AI agent through the Apify MCP server, with published input and output schemas so an agent can use it without documentation.

Is monitoring competitor and reseller prices legal?

This Actor collects only publicly available listing data, with no login and no personal information. Collecting public price data is generally considered legal, and MAP policies themselves are a matter of your own agreements. You are responsible for how you use the data and should seek your own legal advice.

Support

Found a bug or a marketplace that stopped parsing? Open a ticket on the Issues tab.

💼 Need more marketplaces, a different violation rule, or an integration into your enforcement system? Email youssefarhan24@gmail.com 🌐 Got a site you want monitored? Suggest it here ⚡ Upgrade your Apify plan to monitor your full catalogue.