🏛️ PublicSurplus Scraper & Government Auction Monitor

Scrape live PublicSurplus.com government-surplus auctions — title, current price, bids, close time, agency/seller, location, condition, and photos — by state, category, keyword, ZIP radius, or price. Then run it on a schedule as a new-lot monitor that pings Slack, email, or webhook the moment a fresh lot drops, so you bid first.

Turn PublicSurplus into a clean dataset or a real-time deal alert. No login, no browser automation — the site filters server-side, so you pull only the auctions you actually want.

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What does PublicSurplus Scraper do?

PublicSurplus Scraper extracts government & municipal surplus auction listings from PublicSurplus.com and returns clean, structured rows you can export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or push to your app via API. Vehicles, heavy equipment, electronics, office furniture, lab gear, seized property and more — sold off by states, counties, cities, schools, and agencies.

• 🔎 Search the way the site does — by state, category, keyword, ZIP + radius, or price range. All server-side.
• 💰 Current price, bids, increment — plus opening price and reserve where shown.
• 🏢 Seller & location — selling agency, full address, city/state/ZIP.
• 📦 Item detail — quantity, condition, full description, and every photo.
• ⏰ Time-aware — exact close time + a live time_left_seconds countdown.
• 🔔 New-lot monitor — schedule it and get Slack / email / webhook alerts for newly listed lots in your niche.

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What data does it extract?

For every surplus auction:

• 🆔 auction_id, 🔗 lot_url, 🏷️ title
• 💵 current_price, opening_price, bid_increment, 🔨 total_bids, has_bid
• 📦 quantity, condition, 📝 description, 🗂️ category
• 🏢 agency, agency_id (the selling government entity)
• 📍 address, city, state, zipcode
• 🧾 payment_terms, pickup_terms
• 🖼️ images[], thumbnail
• 📅 start_date, end_date, ⏳ time_left_seconds, 🚦 status
• ✨ is_new (monitor mode), 🕒 scraped_at

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Who is it for?

• 🛒 Surplus flippers & resellers sourcing vehicles, equipment, and electronics to resell.
• 🚚 Fleet & equipment buyers tracking gov vehicle/heavy-equipment lots nationwide.
• ♻️ Dealers & exporters monitoring specific categories across many states.
• 📊 Auction aggregators combining PublicSurplus with GovDeals, GSA, and others.
• 🏢 Procurement & research teams analyzing what agencies sell and for how much.

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Two ways to use it

1. Bulk scrape — pull every active auction for a state, category, keyword, ZIP radius, or price band into one clean dataset.
2. New-lot monitor (the recurring play) — set monitorMode: true, attach an Apify Schedule (hourly for hot categories), and the actor emits/alerts only newly-listed lots. Pair with listedWithinHours to narrow it server-side for cheap, fast runs.

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How to use it (step by step)

1. Click Try for free.
2. Pick a Search type (e.g. By state) and enter your scope (e.g. tx).
3. (Optional) add filters: category, keyword, price range, ending-within / listed-within hours.
4. (Optional) turn on Fetch full details for agency, address, bids, condition, and all photos.
5. Click Start, then open the Dataset tab to view/export.
6. (Optional) set monitorMode + a Schedule + an alert channel to get pinged on new lots.

Quick start

{ "searchType": "state", "states": ["tx"] }

New-lot monitor example (cheap & fast)

{
  "searchType": "category",
  "categoryId": "403",
  "listedWithinHours": 2,
  "monitorMode": true,
  "alertOnNewLot": true,
  "slackWebhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/…"
}

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Input

Field	What it does
searchType	state · category · keyword · zipcode · all
states / categoryId / keyword / zipcode + radiusMiles	the scope for the chosen search type
priceMin / priceMax	only return auctions in this price band
endWithinHours	only auctions ending within N hours (closing-soon)
listedWithinHours	only auctions posted within N hours (server-side "new lots")
sortBy	newest · ending · price · site default
fetchDetails	add agency, address, bids, condition, description, all photos
maxLots	hard cap per run (0 = unlimited)
monitorMode, alertOnNewLot, alertOnBidChange, watchlistAuctionIds	recurring watcher + alerts
webhookUrl, slackWebhookUrl, emailRecipients	alert channels
proxyConfiguration, requestConcurrency	proxy + parallelism (datacenter is enough)

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Output

Each auction is one dataset record (fields listed above). Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS, or fetch via the Apify API. Prices are numbers in USD; end_date is ISO‑8601; time_left_seconds counts down to close.

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How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event — you pay for what you pull, no subscription. Suggested rates:

Event	What it covers	Suggested price
lot-scraped	each auction returned	~$0.004 / lot
lot-detail-enriched	each detail-page fetch	~$0.003 / lot
monitor-run-completed	each scheduled watch run	~$0.05 / run
new-lot-detected	each newly listed lot	~$0.02 / lot
alert-delivered	each Slack/email/webhook push	~$0.005 / alert

(Final per-event prices are set on the actor's pricing page.)

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Is it legal to scrape PublicSurplus?

PublicSurplus auction listings are public government-surplus data, browsable without a login, and the records are item/listing data — not personal data. Scraping publicly available listings is generally legal, but you are responsible for your use: review the current PublicSurplus Terms of Service before commercial use or resale of the data.

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FAQ

What is PublicSurplus? PublicSurplus.com is a major online marketplace where US government agencies — states, counties, cities, school districts, universities — auction off surplus and seized property to the public.

Do I need an account or login? No. The actor reads public listing data directly — no account or cookies required.

Can I monitor new auctions and get alerts? Yes. Turn on monitorMode, attach an Apify Schedule, and add a Slack/webhook/email channel. Each run emits and alerts only lots new since the last run. Add listedWithinHours to make runs tiny and fast.

Can I filter by category or state? Yes — searchType: "state" with states, or searchType: "category" with a categoryId. Combine with keyword, price, and ZIP radius.

Can I find bargains or closing-soon lots? Use priceMax for a price ceiling and endWithinHours for auctions about to close.

Does it return photos? Yes — images[] per lot; turn on fetchDetails for the full photo set, plus agency, address, bids, and condition.

How do I export the data? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS from the Dataset tab, or via the Apify API.

Can I integrate with Make, Zapier, n8n, or my backend? Yes — use the webhook/Slack channels for alerts, or the Apify API to pipe the dataset anywhere.

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You might also like

• 🏛️ Other gov & surplus auction sites (GovDeals, GSA Auctions, StorageTreasures)
• 🔨 General online auction & marketplace scrapers
• 📍 Local-listing and facility-data scrapers

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Feedback

Found a missing field or want a new filter? Open an issue on the actor — fast fixes and feature requests welcome.