BizBuySell Deal Monitor & Price Drop Alerts

Find business-acquisition opportunities and see what changed since your last BizBuySell search.

This unofficial monitor turns a recurring BizBuySell search into a persistent alert feed. It detects new listings, asking-price changes, newly disclosed financials, and other listing updates, then returns structured JSON that can be sent to a spreadsheet, CRM, Slack, webhook, or data warehouse.

This Actor is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by BizBuySell. It uses publicly available listing data, which may be incomplete, delayed, changed, or temporarily unavailable.

Try a ready-made example

California BizBuySell Deal Alerts

The example watches one California search, excludes franchises, enriches listing details, and emits new-listing and change events.

Quick start

1. Enter one BizBuySell search URL.
2. Choose a stable, unique monitorKey (for example, california-hvac).
3. Run the Actor once, then schedule it daily or weekly with the same configuration.
4. Use the dataset output or connect the run to your automation tool.

Example input:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.bizbuysell.com/california-businesses-for-sale/" }
  ],
  "monitorKey": "california-acquisitions",
  "maxItems": 25,
  "maxPagesPerUrl": 1,
  "enrichDetails": true,
  "excludeFranchises": true,
  "firstRunBehavior": "emit_all_as_new",
  "eventTypes": [
    "NEW_LISTING",
    "PRICE_DROP",
    "PRICE_INCREASE",
    "FINANCIALS_CHANGED",
    "LISTING_UPDATED"
  ],
  "sourceMaxTotalChargeUsd": 1
}

Use a different monitorKey for each state, geography, or materially different filter set. Do not run the same key concurrently.

What the Actor detects

Event	Meaning
NEW_LISTING	The listing was not in this monitor's saved history.
PRICE_DROP / PRICE_INCREASE	The numeric asking price changed.
FINANCIALS_CHANGED	Cash flow, revenue, or EBITDA changed or was newly disclosed.
LISTING_UPDATED	Another tracked public field changed.
NO_LONGER_IN_RESULTS	The listing was absent for the configured number of snapshots. This is not proof that it sold.
UNCHANGED	Optional output for listings with no detected change.

The first run can either emit current listings as NEW_LISTING events or quietly save a baseline with firstRunBehavior: "baseline_only". Later runs emit only selected event types. detectMissing is off by default because partial or re-sorted result windows can create false disappearance alerts.

Input options

Input	Purpose
startUrls	One BizBuySell state or national search URL.
monitorKey	Persistent history key; keep it unchanged between scheduled runs.
maxItems, maxPagesPerUrl	Control snapshot size, depth, runtime, and source cost.
enrichDetails	Collect seller-disclosed financials, rent, inventory, employees, and other detail fields.
includeBrokerContacts	Include publicly displayed broker fields when enrichment is enabled.
minAskingPrice, maxAskingPrice	Apply an asking-price range.
includeKeywords, excludeKeywords	Match terms against title, description, and location.
minDealScore, minScoreConfidence	Emit only listings meeting a transparent screening threshold and evidence level.
excludeFranchises	Exclude franchise opportunities; enabled by default.
firstRunBehavior	Emit the first snapshot or save it as a quiet baseline.
eventTypes, minPriceDropPercent	Choose event types and suppress small price drops.
emitUnchanged	Include unchanged listings in the output. Off by default.
detectMissing, missingAfterRuns	Opt in to consecutive-miss alerts for stable, complete searches.
sourceMaxTotalChargeUsd	Maximum charge allowed for the upstream extraction run.

Advanced replay/testing inputs include sourceDatasetId, which reads an existing Apify dataset instead of calling the default source. resetState, allowEmptySnapshot, and includeRawSource should normally remain off.

Output

Each emitted item includes the event, listing identity, title, URL, location, asking price, source timestamps, and change details. When available it also includes cash flow, gross revenue, EBITDA, inventory, rent, employees, broker fields, dealScore, and scoreConfidence.

Example:

{
  "eventType": "PRICE_DROP",
  "monitorKey": "california-acquisitions",
  "listingId": "2508641",
  "title": "Profitable HVAC Company with Seller Financing",
  "url": "https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/profitable-hvac-company/2508641/",
  "askingPriceNumeric": 675000,
  "previousAskingPriceNumeric": 750000,
  "priceChangePercent": -10,
  "cashFlowNumeric": 300000,
  "dealScore": 86,
  "scoreConfidence": 100,
  "changes": [
    {
      "field": "askingPriceNumeric",
      "previous": 750000,
      "current": 675000,
      "percentChange": -10
    }
  ]
}

The OUTPUT key in the run's default key-value store contains a summary with source counts, rejected records, event counts, and saved-state counts. Source Actor/run/build/dataset identifiers and a source-schema fingerprint are included for provenance.

Deal score

dealScore is a transparent 0–100 screening heuristic based only on seller-disclosed data. It considers asking-price-to-cash-flow, asking-price-to-revenue, cash-flow margin, and visible seller-financing or real-estate signals. scoreConfidence shows how much evidence was available. Missing financial data is never invented, and the score is not a valuation, lending decision, or due-diligence substitute.

Pricing

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• Monitor run: $0.02 per snapshot
• Change event: $0.005 per emitted event

Apify platform usage and the upstream extraction service may add costs depending on the selected pricing configuration and snapshot size. Set a maximum cost per run and use maxItems/maxPagesPerUrl to control spend.

Reliability and limitations

• Saved history is retained across scheduled runs for each monitorKey.
• Empty or materially invalid source snapshots fail safely without overwriting good state.
• Duplicate source records are collapsed by listing ID.
• Temporary enrichment gaps preserve the last known value and identify it in preservedFields.
• Source availability depends on BizBuySell and the configured upstream extractor; there is no source SLA.
• Seller-provided financials may be incomplete, stale, rounded, or unaudited.
• A listing leaving the search results does not prove that it sold.
• Review BizBuySell's current terms, robots guidance, and applicable privacy, copyright, and anti-spam rules before use.

Integrations

Use Apify schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, email, Google Sheets, Airtable, or a CRM to consume the dataset and event feed. Use listingId as the stable upsert key.