What schedule makes sense?

Daily covers most shortlists; hourly is only worth it for genuinely fast-moving stock.

How do I detect an item disappearing?

A key present in an earlier run and absent from a later one has ended or been delisted — treat both as 'no longer available'.

Will re-running cost the same each time?

Billing is per result, so keeping the search scope tight keeps the recurring cost small.

Japan Market Data › Japan Price Monitoring API

Japan Price Monitoring API

Price monitoring is a diff problem. You need the same field, measured repeatedly, keyed on something stable. Japanese marketplace listings are well suited to this because the listing URL persists while the price changes.

Running the scrapers on a schedule and matching records on item_url produces a time series per item with very little engineering. From there, alerting is a comparison, and reporting is a chart.

Browse all Japanese market scrapers → All Japanese market scrapers →

What you get

`item_url`	Stable key for matching records across runs.
`current_price_jpy`	The field you diff.
`condition`	Guards against false positives when condition differs.
`sold_at`	Marks a listing as ended so it can be retired from the watchlist.

Field names follow the actor's dataset schema and can differ slightly between actors — check the actor page for the exact input and output schema before wiring it into a pipeline.

Use cases

Alert when a watched item's price falls below a threshold.
Chart the price history of a shortlist across several weeks.
Retire sold items automatically using the end timestamp.

How a run works

Starting a run: pick the actor for your marketplace from the publisher page, then start it from the Apify console or the API. Billing is per result returned (roughly $0.002 per item), so a scoped search stays cheap.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/$DATASET_ID/items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN&format=json"

FAQ

What schedule makes sense?: Daily covers most shortlists; hourly is only worth it for genuinely fast-moving stock.
How do I detect an item disappearing?: A key present in an earlier run and absent from a later one has ended or been delisted — treat both as 'no longer available'.
Will re-running cost the same each time?: Billing is per result, so keeping the search scope tight keeps the recurring cost small.

What you get

Use cases

How a run works

FAQ

Related