Price Tracker

💰 Track product prices and get alerts when prices drop below your threshold. Perfect for deal hunting, market research, and price monitoring.

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📺 What It Tracks

• Current Price: Latest product price
• Price History: Previous price stored in Key-Value Store
• Price Changes: Calculated price difference and percentage change
• Threshold Alerts: Automatic alerts when price drops below threshold
• Price Drop Detection: Identifies when prices decrease

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🚀 Key Features

Feature	Description
💾 Price History	Stores price history in Key-Value Store for comparison
🔔 Smart Alerts	Automatic alerts when price drops below threshold
📊 Price Analytics	Calculates price change and percentage difference
🔄 Retry Logic	3 automatic retries on fetch failure
⏱️ Smart Timeouts	60-second navigation timeout with load event waiting
🤖 Anti-Bot Measures	Includes viewport, headers, and browser fingerprinting evasion
📈 Webhook Integration	Alerts stored in Key-Value Store for webhook triggers

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📥 Input

Required

• productUrl (string): The URL of the product to track
  • Example: "https://www.amazon.com/product"
• threshold (number): Alert when price drops below this value
  • Example: 50.00

Optional

• storeName (string, default: "default"): Key-value store name for tracking

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📤 Output

Returns comprehensive price tracking data:

First Run (No Previous Price)

{
  "url": "https://amazon.com/product",
  "currentPrice": 49.99,
  "previousPrice": null,
  "priceChange": null,
  "priceChangePercent": null,
  "threshold": 50.00,
  "isBelowThreshold": true,
  "priceDropped": false,
  "alert": false,
  "isFirstRun": true,
  "message": "First run - price baseline established",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "_metadata": {
    "runId": "abc123",
    "actorId": "user/price-tracker",
    "processedAt": "2024-01-01T12:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Price Drop Detected

{
  "url": "https://amazon.com/product",
  "currentPrice": 49.99,
  "previousPrice": 59.99,
  "priceChange": -10.00,
  "priceChangePercent": -16.67,
  "threshold": 50.00,
  "isBelowThreshold": true,
  "priceDropped": true,
  "alert": true,
  "isFirstRun": false,
  "message": "Price dropped from $59.99 to $49.99 (-16.67% decrease). Below threshold of $50.00!",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "_metadata": {
    "runId": "abc123",
    "actorId": "user/price-tracker",
    "processedAt": "2024-01-01T12:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

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💡 Use Cases

• ✅ Deal Hunting - Get alerts when products drop below your price
• ✅ Price Monitoring - Track competitor pricing over time
• ✅ Market Research - Analyze price trends and fluctuations
• ✅ E-commerce Dashboards - Monitor product prices at scale
• ✅ Automated Alerts - Set up webhooks for price drop notifications
• ✅ Budget Management - Track prices for wishlist items

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⚙️ Technical Details

• Extraction Method: Browser-based scraping using Playwright
• Storage: Price history stored in Key-Value Store with SHA-256 hashed keys
• Retry Strategy: 3 automatic retries on fetch failure
• Timeout Strategy: 60-second navigation timeout with load event waiting
• Anti-Bot Measures: Viewport size, realistic headers, browser fingerprinting evasion
• Alert Storage: Alerts stored in ALERT key for webhook integration

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🔗 Integration

Webhooks

Configure webhooks in Apify to trigger on:

• Run succeeded: Check OUTPUT key for summary
• Alert triggered: Check ALERT key for alert details

Example webhook payload:

{
  "runId": "abc123",
  "status": "SUCCEEDED",
  "alertKey": "ALERT",
  "alertData": {
    "currentPrice": 49.99,
    "previousPrice": 59.99,
    "message": "Price dropped..."
  }
}

Key-Value Store

• OUTPUT: Run summary with success status
• ALERT: Alert data (only set when alert triggered)
• product-{hash}: Price history for each product (SHA-256 hashed URL)

Scheduled Runs

Set up Apify Schedules to run periodically:

• Daily price checks
• Hourly monitoring
• Custom intervals

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📝 Example Usage

Basic Price Tracking

{
  "productUrl": "https://www.amazon.com/product",
  "threshold": 50.00
}

With Custom Store Name

{
  "productUrl": "https://www.amazon.com/product",
  "threshold": 50.00,
  "storeName": "my-price-tracker"
}

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⚠️ Important Notes

• First Run: previousPrice, priceChange, and priceChangePercent will be null on the first run
• Price History: Stored in Key-Value Store using SHA-256 hashed product URLs
• Supported Sites: Works with Amazon, Shopify stores, and generic e-commerce sites
• Success Reporting: Only reports success when price is successfully extracted and stored
• Proxy Location Impact: ⚠️ Important: When using residential proxies, Amazon may display different prices and currencies based on the proxy's geographic location. Prices shown may vary from your local region, and currency may differ (e.g., USD vs EUR vs GBP). For consistent pricing, consider using the same proxy location or disabling proxies for price tracking.