Bidsquare Live Tracker

Track real-time auction events from Bidsquare — a marketplace hosting dozens of independent art, antiques, and estate auction houses (Brunk Auctions, Kodner, Augusta Auctions, and many more) that run their sales through Bidsquare's shared bidding platform. Bidsquare pushes live auction state over a WebSocket the moment you open a catalog page — no login required — and this Actor listens to that same feed instead of repeatedly re-scraping a page. Just give it one or more Bidsquare auction catalog URLs and a monitoring duration.

Why use Bidsquare Live Tracker?

Existing Bidsquare tools on the market scrape static, server-rendered pages — useful for browsing listings, but they can't tell you the instant an auction's active lot changes or a bid comes in. This Actor connects to Bidsquare's actual live-auction feed (confirmed by watching a real sale in progress) and captures real bid events, lot transitions, and auctioneer messages as they happen. It is built for:

• Collectors and dealers watching several sales across different Bidsquare-hosted auction houses at once, without refreshing tabs.
• Live-auction tooling — building your own notification bot, dashboard, or bidding assistant on top of real-time state instead of a polled snapshot.
• Research into how a sale actually unfolds — which lot is live, how the auction's status changes over the course of a sale — not just the final result.

How to use Bidsquare Live Tracker

1. Find a Bidsquare auction's catalog page (URL pattern bidsquare.com/auctions/<house>/<sale-slug>/catalog).
2. Paste one or more of these URLs into Auction catalog URLs.
3. Set Max monitoring duration to cover the window you want to watch (e.g. the scheduled sale time).
4. Run the Actor. It connects to Bidsquare's live feed and records every real-time event for that auction — watch the Output tab fill in live.
5. Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull results via the Apify API.

Input

Field	Type	Description
auction_urls	array of URLs	One or more Bidsquare auction catalog 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.bidsquare.com/auctions/hakes-auctions/september-2026-pop-culture-auction-24709/catalog" }
  ],
  "max_duration_secs": 120
}

Output

Each dataset item is one real-time event from the auction's live feed. Six event types (confirmed directly against a live sale in progress) are parsed into structured fields — auctionSnapshot (auction status + active lot), auctionLotSnapshot (a lot's current bid state), lotItemStarted / lotItemSkipped (a lot opening or closing), lotMessageFromAdmin (auctioneer messages like "Fair Warning!"), and floorBidAccepted (an actual bid being placed):

{
  "source_url": "https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/robinhood-auctions/the-summer-fine-art-auction-24846/catalog",
  "event_action": "floorBidAccepted",
  "send_time": 1790103739107,
  "auctionID": 24846,
  "lotID": 9864892,
  "lotNumber": "196",
  "bid": 500,
  "highestBidder": "0",
  "startingPrice": 480,
  "nextBid": 550,
  "numberOfBids": 2,
  "isReservePriceMet": true,
  "observed_at": "2026-09-22T19:02:20.059283+00:00"
}

Any other real-time event Bidsquare's feed sends is captured too, with its event name in event_action and its full original payload preserved in raw_data, so you never miss an event even for message types this Actor doesn't have a dedicated field mapping for yet.

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

Data table

Field	Description
event_action	The type of real-time event (auctionSnapshot, auctionLotSnapshot, lotItemStarted, lotItemSkipped, lotMessageFromAdmin, floorBidAccepted, or others)
lotID, lotNumber, lotName	Identifiers for the lot the event concerns
bid	The bid amount, for floorBidAccepted events
currentBid, numberOfBids, nextBid	A lot's live bidding state, for auctionLotSnapshot events
messageText	The auctioneer's message text, for lotMessageFromAdmin events
currentLotID, currentLotNumber	Which lot is currently active in the sale, for auctionSnapshot events
raw_data	Full original event payload for event types not yet broken into dedicated fields
observed_at	Timestamp when this Actor captured the event

Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses the pay-per-event pricing model — you pay only for each real-time event actually captured (event: auction-event), not for idle connection time. A quiet auction with no activity costs nothing beyond the initial page load.

Tips

• Point this at an auction close to its scheduled live/closing time for the highest density of events.
• Combine with Apify's Scheduler to start a run a few minutes before a sale begins.
• Pipe the dataset into an Apify webhook or Telegram integration to get alerted when the active lot changes.

FAQ & disclaimers

This Actor only reads data that a normal visitor's browser already receives when viewing a public auction catalog page — it does not place bids, log in, or bypass any access control. It is intended for personal research, auction monitoring, and building notification tools. Always respect Bidsquare's Terms of Service for your specific use case. The real-time protocol was reverse-engineered by observing an actual live sale in progress and isn't officially documented by Bidsquare, so message formats may evolve over time — if this Actor stops returning useful data, please open an issue.