Auction Bid Tracker (BidJS)

Track live bidding data from BidJS (Bidlogix)-powered webcast auction sites — confirmed working on BPI Auctions, Hobbs Parker, and AH Asset Solutions, and built to work on other machinery, industrial, and asset-disposal auctioneers running the same platform — the moment a new bid comes in. This Actor listens to the same real-time WebSocket feed the auction site's own browser page uses, so data arrives instantly instead of on a delayed refresh cycle. BidJS deployments vary in their exact message format between sites; this Actor recognizes both variants observed so far (branded as "artisio" and the native BidJS broadcast format) and normalizes them to one consistent output. Just give it one or more auction page URLs and it does the rest — no login, no API key required.

Why use Auction Bid Tracker?

Timed and webcast auctions for machinery, plant equipment, vehicles, and industrial assets move fast in the final minutes, and refreshing a browser tab manually means missing price movement. This Actor is built for:

• Equipment dealers and resellers who track several concurrent lots across auction houses and want a live feed of the current winning bid, bid count, and time remaining.
• Auction sniping / last-minute bid alert tools that need sub-second bid updates rather than a periodically-scraped snapshot.
• Price intelligence and market research on used industrial equipment, building a historical dataset of sold prices and bidding velocity.
• Developers building dashboards or notification bots (Telegram, Slack, email) on top of live auction activity, using Apify's API, webhooks, and scheduling instead of hosting their own scraper infrastructure.

How to use Auction Bid Tracker

1. Find a live or upcoming auction lot page on a BidJS-powered site (the URL usually contains #/auctions/<uuid>).
2. Paste one or more of these URLs into the Auction URLs input field.
3. Set Max monitoring duration to roughly how long you want to listen (e.g. the remaining time before the auction closes).
4. Run the Actor. Every time a lot's price, bid count, or status changes, a new record is written to the dataset in real time — you can watch it fill in live from the Output tab.
5. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull it via the Apify API into your own app.

Input

Field	Type	Description
auction_urls	array of URLs	One or more BidJS auction detail page URLs to monitor
max_duration_secs	integer	How long (in seconds) to keep listening before the run ends (default: 120)

{
  "auction_urls": [
    { "url": "https://www.bpiauctions.com/auctions/#/auctions/7696e8eb-e7b6-4d97-80f4-506c61bc2524" }
  ],
  "max_duration_secs": 120
}

Output

Each dataset item represents one observed bid/lot-status update:

{
  "source_url": "https://www.bpiauctions.com/auctions/#/auctions/387659e2-96d8-4792-ad50-338a75290e90",
  "dialect": "artisio",
  "event_type": "socket__lot_updated",
  "auction_uuid": "387659e2-96d8-4792-ad50-338a75290e90",
  "lot_uuid": "eb643552-14f2-4347-965a-74cd8afd0132",
  "status": "published",
  "current_bid_amount": 5350.0,
  "num_of_bids": 8,
  "reserve": null,
  "start_price": 5000.0,
  "buy_now_price": null,
  "end_date": "2026-09-24 11:00:20+00:00",
  "bidder_ref": "00161248",
  "auto_bid": false,
  "bid_created_at": "2026-09-19 15:50:01.566338+00:00",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-22T15:57:27.925490+00:00"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data table

Field	Description
dialect	Which BidJS message format this site uses (artisio or bidjs_native) — informational, doesn't affect the other fields' meaning
lot_uuid	Unique ID of the auction lot
current_bid_amount	Current highest bid on the lot
num_of_bids	Total number of bids placed so far (not always available depending on site)
bidder_ref	Identifier for the current leading bidder (paddle number or account reference, depending on site)
auto_bid	Whether the leading bid was placed by an automatic/proxy bid
reserve, start_price, buy_now_price	Lot pricing details, where set
end_date	Scheduled close time of the lot
observed_at	Timestamp when this Actor captured the update

Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses the pay-per-event pricing model — you pay only for each new bid/status update actually captured (event: bid-update), not for idle monitoring time. A quiet lot with no new bids costs nothing beyond the initial page load.

Tips

• Point this at a lot that's actively nearing its close for the highest density of updates.
• Combine auction_urls with Apify's Scheduler to automatically start a run a few minutes before a known auction closing time.
• Pipe the dataset into an Apify webhook to trigger your own alert (Telegram, email, Slack) when a run finishes with new bid data.

Quick start: get a Telegram message when a lot's price changes

No coding required — this uses Apify's built-in Telegram integration:

1. Run this Actor once against the lot you care about, with max_duration_secs set to cover the time window you want to watch.
2. On the run's page, open the Integrations tab and add the Telegram integration, connecting your own bot and chat.
3. Set it to trigger on Run succeeded — it will post a message (optionally including the dataset contents) once the run finishes.
4. For near-live alerts, pair this with the Scheduler (previous tip) to re-run every few minutes during an auction's final stretch, so each run's finish acts as a fresh alert.

FAQ & disclaimers

This Actor only reads data that a normal visitor's browser already receives when viewing a public auction page — it does not place bids, log in, or bypass any access control. It is intended for personal research, price monitoring, and building notification tools. Always respect the target site's Terms of Service for your specific use case. Auction site structures can change; if this Actor stops returning data, please open an issue.