Product Price Change & Metadata Extractor

Extract product title, price, availability, images, brand, SKU, and Schema.org metadata from public product pages, then optionally compare a previous observation to detect verified price, stock, and metadata changes.

This Actor is a lightweight product metadata extractor, product price change tracker, availability checker, and first-pass e-commerce product monitor for AI agents and automation workflows. It uses HTTP requests instead of browser rendering or paid proxies, reads Schema.org Product JSON-LD and microdata first, then falls back to common product meta tags.

It is designed for product research, catalog building, procurement automation, price monitoring pipelines, and competitor-product checks. Use a browser-based scraper only for JavaScript-heavy pages that return a partial result.

Input

{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com/products/example-product"
  ],
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 20
}

The first version accepts up to 20 public HTTP or HTTPS URLs per run.

To compare current product data with a previous successful observation, provide optional previousProducts records matched by requested url:

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com/products/example-product"],
  "previousProducts": [
    {
      "url": "https://example.com/products/example-product",
      "price": "49.99",
      "availability": "InStock"
    }
  ]
}

Output

Each URL produces one dataset item:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "url": "https://example.com/products/example-product",
  "finalUrl": "https://example.com/products/example-product",
  "title": "Example Product",
  "description": "Product description",
  "price": "49.99",
  "priceNumeric": 49.99,
  "currentPriceNumeric": 49.99,
  "previousPriceNumeric": null,
  "priceChanged": false,
  "priceDeltaNumeric": null,
  "priceDeltaPercent": null,
  "priceDirection": null,
  "currency": "USD",
  "availability": "InStock",
  "availabilityChanged": false,
  "brand": "Example Brand",
  "sku": "SKU-123",
  "primaryImage": "https://example.com/images/product.jpg",
  "images": [
    "https://example.com/images/product.jpg"
  ],
  "structuredDataFound": true,
  "changedFields": [],
  "diagnostics": []
}

Failed pages return an uncharged error item so users can understand what went wrong.

Successful records also include:

• changeStatus: initial, changed, or unchanged;
• field-level changes against a supplied previous record;
• API-friendly priceNumeric, highPriceNumeric, and primaryImage;
• flat change fields such as changedFields, priceChanged, priceDeltaNumeric, priceDeltaPercent, priceDirection, and availabilityChanged;
• completenessScore and missingFields;
• machine-readable diagnostics such as missingPrice, noProductJsonLd, lowCompletenessInitial, comparisonDegraded, and noVerifiedChanges;
• source and observation evidence.

Unchanged comparison results, partial results, and errors are not charged. Missing fields in a new observation are treated as unknown, not as verified removals. Results with very low completeness or a substantial completeness drop are returned as uncharged partial records.

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify pay-per-event pricing:

• apify-actor-start: $0.00005 once per run.
• product-result: $0.001 per useful successful product result.
• apify-default-dataset-item is intentionally not configured, so partial and error records are not charged merely because they are written to the dataset.

Only useful successful results trigger the paid event: initial observations and observations containing verified changes.

The launch price targets a clear niche: standards-based metadata extraction at roughly one sixth of the free-plan per-product price of Apify's full browser and proxy-capable e-commerce scraper.

MCP and API use

After publication, AI agents can run this Actor through Apify's MCP server. The Actor is also callable through the Apify API and integrations.

Good fits

• Product metadata extraction from standards-compliant e-commerce pages.
• Price and availability checks for procurement or monitoring workflows.
• Catalog enrichment where Schema.org Product data is present.
• Comparing a previous product observation with a new observation to detect verified price, stock, image, brand, SKU, or metadata changes.

Current limitations

• JavaScript-only pages may not expose product data in the initial HTML.
• Pages protected by login screens, CAPTCHAs, or aggressive bot protection may fail.
• The first version does not maintain price history or schedule monitoring.

Safety

The Actor rejects local and private network addresses, limits each HTML response to 3 MB, and follows only redirects that resolve to public addresses.