# Competitor Pricing & Offer Change Monitor — Price Diffs (`paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Rashad Flet](https://apify.com/paoe) (community)
- **Categories:** E-commerce, Business, Marketing
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $6.00 / 1,000 page checkeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

Watch pricing and offer pages and get told only what changed: prices added or removed, monthly/annual prices, calls to action and product schema. The first run saves a baseline; later runs report the diff, so a schedule turns it into a change feed. Built by PAOE.

Each item is processed individually and charged as its own event, so you pay only for what the run actually delivers. Results are written to the run's dataset as one JSON object per item, ready to download as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull through the Apify API.

### What it checks

For each page: the prices shown, any monthly or annual (period) prices, the calls to action present, the page title and whether the page carries product structured data. A first run saves a baseline; later runs report only what actually changed against it.

### Pricing

| Event | What it covers | Price |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `page-checked` | page checked (primary) | $0.01 per event |
| `change-detected` | change detected | $0.08 per event |

Volume tiers reduce the price automatically on higher Apify plans: Bronze 15% off, Silver 25% off and Gold or above 40% off the listed free-tier price. The charge is per item processed, not per run.

### Input

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `urls` | array | yes | `["https://example.com/pricing"]` | Pages to snapshot and watch for changes. |
| `previous` | object | no | — | Advanced: supply prior snapshots to diff against instead of the stored baseline. |

Example input:

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com/pricing"
  ]
}
```

### Output

One JSON object per item in the run's dataset. Every result carries the input it came from plus the fields this Actor measures, so the output can be joined back to your own data without guessing which row is which. The final dataset entry is a `summary` object with the run's totals.

### Typical use cases

- Track what competitors charge and when they change it.
- Feed pricing changes into alerts, dashboards or spreadsheets.
- Keep a dated record of competitor offers for later comparison.

### Limitations

A first sighting is reported as `first_seen` and charged the `page-checked` event only, never the `change-detected` event. The change event is charged once per page that genuinely moved against a previous snapshot; the number of changes is reported as data, not used as a multiplier, so a busy page cannot inflate the bill. The baseline lives in the Actor's key-value store, and you can pass `previous` explicitly instead.

#### Am I charged for a run with no baseline yet?

Every limitation above is reported per item in a `findings` entry with a `level` of `fail`, `warn`, `info` or `ok`, a machine-readable `code` and a concrete `action`. If something cannot be checked it is reported as such rather than assumed to be fine.

#### Can it run on a schedule?

Yes. Save a task from this Actor with your inputs, then set a schedule on the task. Scheduled runs recur with the same inputs, which is the intended way to use it for ongoing monitoring.

#### What if the page is JavaScript-rendered?

Prices and calls to action embedded in the served HTML are detected. Values that only appear after client-side JavaScript runs are not visible to this Actor, and that shows up as an empty `prices` list rather than a false change.

### Notes

If a site returns something unexpected, open an issue on the Actor's page with the URL and the input used, and it will be looked at.

### Related Actors

- [AI Agent Readiness Audit](https://apify.com/paoe/ai-agent-readiness-audit)

### Keywords

competitor pricing, price monitoring, price change alerts, competitor tracking, ecommerce, price scraping, pricing intelligence.

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Pages to snapshot and watch for changes.

## `previous` (type: `object`):

Advanced: supply prior snapshots to diff against instead of the stored baseline.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com/pricing"
  ]
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `reports` (type: `string`):

One report per watched page: only the differences against the saved baseline.

## `summary` (type: `string`):

Pages checked, pages changed and the count of individual changes detected.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "urls": [
        "https://example.com/pricing"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "urls": ["https://example.com/pricing"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com/pricing"
  ]
}' |
apify call paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,paoe/competitor-pricing-offer-change-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/Rda9gOAZvHvEVaDKZ/builds/vX1g3pxMDCGei6xfY/openapi.json