Grays.com Auction Scraper 🏷️

Scrape live auction listings from Grays.com — Australia's #1 online auction platform with thousands of items across cars, electronics, industrial equipment, wine, home goods, and more.

No browser needed. This Actor hits Grays' public Typesense search API directly, making it fast (HTTP-only), cheap to run, and reliable.

What It Does

• Searches live Grays.com auctions by keyword, category, or custom filter
• Returns structured data: title, current bid, buy-now price, reserve status, condition, location, closing time, category, brand, image, and link
• Paginates through all matching results automatically
• Sorts by closing time (default), price, or relevance

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
tqlCollection	string	items_live	Typesense collection name (see Setup below)
query	string	*	Search query. * = all items. Try laptop, wine, Land Rover
categories	array	[]	Category slugs to filter. E.g. ["computers-and-electronics", "laptops"]
filterBy	string	""	Raw Typesense filter expression. E.g. price:<500 && condition:=New
sortBy	enum	closing_time:asc	Sort: closing_time:asc, price:asc, price:desc, _text_match:desc
maxResults	integer	500	Max items to return (1–10000)
perPage	integer	50	Items per page (1–250)

⚠️ Important: Finding the Collection Name

The Typesense collection name may change. To find the current one:

1. Open grays.com/search in Chrome/Firefox
2. Open DevTools → Network tab
3. Filter requests by typesense
4. Click any multi_search request
5. In the Payload tab, copy the value of searches[0].collection
6. Paste it into the tqlCollection input field

The default items_live is a best guess — update it if you get "Collection not found" errors.

Output

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "title": "APPLE IPAD AIR 2ND A1566 Laptop A8X 16GB Tablet",
  "price": 29,
  "reserve_status": "NoReserve",
  "condition": "Used",
  "location": "16 Artisan Rd, Seven Hills, 2147",
  "closing_time": "2026-08-12 20:00:00",
  "category": "Computers & IT Equipment",
  "parent_category": "Computers & Electronics",
  "all_categories": ["Computers & IT Equipment"],
  "image_urls": ["https://res0.grays.com/..."],
  "url": "https://www.grays.com/lot/0074-2586549/...",
  "bidder_count": 3,
  "bid_count": 5,
  "lot_id": 25880879,
  "sale_id": 2586549,
  "sale_name": "Assorted Speakers, Computer & IT Equipments...",
  "sale_state": "NSW",
  "listing_type": "Auction",
  "object_type": "LOT",
  "object_status": "Open"
}

Example Inputs

All laptops

{
  "query": "laptop",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Computers & IT Equipment under $50

{
  "categories": ["Computers & IT Equipment"],
  "filterBy": "ObjectPrice:<50",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Wine in Victoria

{
  "categories": ["Wine"],
  "filterBy": "SaleState:=VIC",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Pricing

Pay-per-event (PPE) on the Apify Store. This Actor is HTTP-only — no browser, no proxy costs, compute usage is minimal.

FAQ

Q: Does this require login? A: No. The Typesense API key is public and read-only.

Q: Will Grays block scraping? A: This uses Grays' own search API with their public key — it looks like normal site traffic. Rate limiting is handled by Typesense.

Q: Can I scrape completed/sold auctions? A: The Typesense index only contains live listings. For historical data, you'd need a different approach.

Q: How often is data updated? A: Real-time — Typesense reflects the current Grays.com search results.