MercadoLibre Price Monitor (Colombia / LATAM)

Apify Actor that scrapes public MercadoLibre product listings by keyword for legitimate price monitoring and competitive analysis. Optimized for Colombia (mercadolibre.com.co) with support for major LATAM sites.

Built with Crawlee + Playwright (browser required to pass MercadoLibre anti-bot walls), low concurrency, polite delays, listing-ID deduplication, and Apify Proxy (residential recommended).

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What it does

1. Opens MercadoLibre search pages for your keyword on the selected country site
2. Extracts structured listing fields from the rendered results (DOM + optional in-page API)
3. Deduplicates by listingId and stops at maxItems
4. Writes a clean dataset ready for dashboards, alerts, or competitive analysis

Output fields

Field	Description
listingId	MercadoLibre item/product ID (e.g. MCO1027172677)
title	Listing title
price	Numeric price
currency	Currency code (e.g. COP)
seller	Seller / official store when available
condition	Condition label when shown (e.g. Reacondicionado)
shippingInfo	Free shipping or shipping hint
url	Canonical listing URL
thumbnail	Thumbnail URL when available
country	Site ID (MCO, MLA, …)
searchKeyword	Keyword used for the run
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp
source	api | html-json | html-css

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Input

Field	Required	Default	Description
searchKeyword	✅	—	Search term, e.g. iphone 15
country		CO	CO, AR, MX, CL, PE, BR, UY, EC
maxPages		2	Max search pages (cap 20)
maxItems		50	Max unique listings (cap 500)
proxyConfiguration		Apify Proxy + RESIDENTIAL	Required for reliable runs

Example input

{
  "searchKeyword": "iphone 15",
  "country": "CO",
  "maxPages": 1,
  "maxItems": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "CO"
  }
}

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Example output (real run)

Live verification run on Apify (2026-07-29): keyword iphone 15, country CO, maxItems: 10. Extracted 10 unique listings from listado.mercadolibre.com.co.

[
  {
    "listingId": "MCO1027172677",
    "title": "Apple iPhone 15 128 GB Negro - Distribuidor Autorizado",
    "price": 3469000,
    "currency": "COP",
    "seller": "Apple",
    "condition": null,
    "shippingInfo": null,
    "url": "https://www.mercadolibre.com.co/apple-iphone-15-128-gb-negro-distribuidor-autorizado/p/MCO1027172677",
    "thumbnail": "https://http2.mlstatic.com/D_Q_NP_2X_832226-MLA95493131564_102025-E.webp",
    "source": "html-css",
    "country": "MCO",
    "searchKeyword": "iphone 15",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T04:44:25.168Z"
  },
  {
    "listingId": "MCO2000122364",
    "title": "Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max (256 GB) - Titanio Natural - Excelente (Reacondicionado)",
    "price": 4400000,
    "currency": "COP",
    "seller": null,
    "condition": "Reacondicionado",
    "shippingInfo": "Envío gratis",
    "url": "https://www.mercadolibre.com.co/apple-iphone-15-pro-max-256-gb-titanio-natural-excelente-reacondicionado/p/MCO2000122364",
    "thumbnail": "https://http2.mlstatic.com/D_Q_NP_2X_637299-MLA95495400760_102025-E.webp",
    "source": "html-css",
    "country": "MCO",
    "searchKeyword": "iphone 15",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T04:44:25.168Z"
  },
  {
    "listingId": "MCO2000139746",
    "title": "Apple iPhone 15 (128 GB) - Negro - Excelente (Reacondicionado)",
    "price": 1370444,
    "currency": "COP",
    "seller": null,
    "condition": "Reacondicionado",
    "shippingInfo": "Envío gratis",
    "url": "https://www.mercadolibre.com.co/apple-iphone-15-128-gb-negro-excelente-reacondicionado/p/MCO2000139746",
    "thumbnail": "https://http2.mlstatic.com/D_Q_NP_2X_832226-MLA95493131564_102025-E.webp",
    "source": "html-css",
    "country": "MCO",
    "searchKeyword": "iphone 15",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-29T04:44:25.168Z"
  }
]

Successful platform run: console run QvUtMZpGKCI7ZSq2q

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Use cases

• Track competitor prices for a product category in Colombia / LATAM
• Feed pricing dashboards or alerts (daily cron via Apify Schedule)
• Market research for electronics, fashion, home, etc.
• Enrich internal catalogs with public marketplace benchmarks

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Limits & responsible use

• Public data only. Do not use this Actor to access private accounts, bypass login walls for personal data, or scrape non-public information.
• Respect MercadoLibre Terms of Use and robots.txt.
• Default polite settings: concurrency 2, 1–2s+ delay between requests, small maxPages / maxItems.
• MercadoLibre applies strong anti-bot controls. Apify Proxy RESIDENTIAL (country matched to the site, e.g. CO) is strongly recommended.
• Local apify run often returns 0 items if your IP is blocked and Apify Proxy external access is not enabled — run on the Apify platform instead.
• Do not overload MercadoLibre: keep schedules modest; this tool is for monitoring, not bulk harvesting.

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Monetization suggestion

Model	Suggested price
Pay per result	$0.50 – $1.00 / 1,000 results
Monthly rental	$19 – $29 / month

Position as a lightweight Colombia/LATAM price monitor (keyword → clean dataset), simpler/cheaper than full-catalog scrapers.

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Run locally

cd mercadolibre-price-monitor
npm install --registry https://registry.npmjs.org/
export APIFY_TOKEN=$(grep '^APIFY_TOKEN=' ../.env | cut -d= -f2-)
npx --registry https://registry.npmjs.org/ apify-cli run

Note: local runs usually need Proxy external access on your Apify plan. Prefer platform runs.

Deploy

export APIFY_TOKEN=$(grep '^APIFY_TOKEN=' ../.env | cut -d= -f2-)
npx --registry https://registry.npmjs.org/ apify-cli push

Actor console: https://console.apify.com/actors/7c20OcOOz7g8A2naV

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Store publication (manual console steps)

After apify push, finish monetization in Apify Console:

1. Open the Actor → Settings → set title, description, categories (E-commerce, Price monitoring).
2. README tab: confirm this README renders correctly.
3. Pricing: enable Rental ($19–29/mo) and/or Pay per result ($0.50–1.00 / 1K).
4. Attach example input + output from a successful run (see sample above).
5. Publish to Apify Store (complete Store publishing checklist / approval).
6. Optional: create a Schedule for daily keyword monitors.
7. Ensure the default proxy example uses RESIDENTIAL for reliable demos.

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Tech

• Node.js 20 / Apify SDK 3
• Crawlee PlaywrightCrawler (apify/actor-node-playwright-chrome)
• Apify Proxy via Actor.createProxyConfiguration

MIT License — use responsibly.