Amazon Price Monitor

Track Amazon prices, get email alerts on drops, and build historical price charts — all automated.

🚀 Overview

Amazon Price Monitor is a powerful Apify actor that scrapes Amazon product pages to extract pricing, ratings, availability, and seller data. It tracks price changes over time, alerts you when prices drop, and helps you make smarter buying decisions.

Use cases:

• 🏪 E-commerce sellers — monitor competitor pricing and adjust your strategy
• 🛒 Savvy shoppers — get notified when wishlist items go on sale
• 📊 Market researchers — build historical price datasets for analysis

✨ Features

Feature	Description
Price Extraction	Captures current price, currency, and discount info
Rating & Reviews	Extracts star rating and total review count
Availability Check	Detects in-stock, out-of-stock, and pre-order status
ASIN & Seller	Identifies product ASIN and seller name
Category Detection	Extracts breadcrumb category path
Price History	Tracks price changes across runs (local in-memory, ready for KV store)
Price Alerts	Detects significant price drops (5%+) and logs notifications
Price Range Filter	Skip products outside your desired price window
Proxy Support	Residential proxy rotation to avoid blocks
SaaS Ready	Built for Apify platform with $10–50/month subscription model

💰 Pricing Model (SaaS)

This actor is designed for the Apify Store with a subscription pricing model:

Tier	Price	Features
Starter	$10/month	Up to 100 products, daily checks, email alerts
Pro	$25/month	Up to 500 products, hourly checks, email + SMS alerts
Enterprise	$50/month	Unlimited products, real-time checks, webhook integrations, API access

📥 Input

Configure the actor with these parameters:

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	Required	Amazon product URLs or search result pages
maxProducts	integer	50	Max products to scrape per run (1–500)
proxyConfiguration	object	Residential proxy	Apify proxy config for geotargeting
minPrice	number	5	Minimum product price to track ($)
maxPrice	number	5000	Maximum product price to track ($)
notifyOnChange	boolean	true	Send alert when price changes ≥5%

📤 Output

The actor outputs a dataset of products with this schema:

{
  "productName": "Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Headphones",
  "price": 328.00,
  "currency": "USD",
  "rating": 4.6,
  "reviewsCount": 24580,
  "availability": "In Stock",
  "asin": "B0C1H6Z3NQ",
  "seller": "Amazon.com",
  "category": "Headphones",
  "url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1H6Z3NQ",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-01-15T10:30:00.000Z",
  "priceHistory": [
    { "date": "2024-01-10T08:00:00.000Z", "price": 348.00 },
    { "date": "2024-01-15T10:30:00.000Z", "price": 328.00 }
  ]
}

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌───────────────┐
│ Start URLs  │────▶│ PlaywrightCrawler│────▶│ Dataset       │
└─────────────┘     │  (Headless Chrom)│     └───────────────┘
                    │                  │     ┌───────────────┐
                    │  • Extract data  │────▶│ Price History │
                    │  • Price filters │     │  (KV Store)   │
                    │  • Proxy rotate  │     └───────────────┘
                    └──────────────────┘

🛠️ Local Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Install Playwright browsers
npx playwright install chromium

# Run locally (requires Apify token)
npm start

🔧 Technical Details

• Runtime: Node.js 20+
• Framework: Crawlee + Playwright (PlaywrightCrawler)
• Browser: Headless Chromium
• Proxy: Apify Proxy with residential group support
• Rate Limiting: Automatic retry with exponential backoff
• Selector Strategy: Multi-fallback price selectors for Amazon's dynamic layout

Price Selector Fallbacks

The crawler attempts price extraction in this order:

1. .a-price .a-price-whole + .a-price .a-price-fraction (primary)
2. span.a-price[data-a-size="xl"] span.a-offscreen (deal price)
3. #price_inside_buybox, #priceblock_ourprice, #priceblock_dealprice (legacy)

⚠️ Limitations

• Amazon may block aggressive scraping — use residential proxies and reasonable concurrency
• Price selectors may break if Amazon changes its DOM structure
• Price history is currently in-memory; production deployments should use Apify KV Store

📄 License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE