Disclosure: I built the Apify Actor in this post. Written with AI assistance.
If you flip phones, bikes, tools or furniture, you already know the rule: the good OfferUp deals are gone within the hour. Refreshing the app all day is not a strategy. What you want is a ping on your phone only when something new shows up for your search, in your area.
Here is a setup that does exactly that with OfferUp Scraper on Apify. Five minutes, no code.
1. Build your search
Open the Actor and fill in the form:
-
Keywords: what you hunt for, one per line (
iphone 15,road bike,dewalt). -
Locations: a US city or ZIP, several if you want (
Seattle, WA,98101). -
Distance, Min/Max price, Condition and Sort (
newest) to cut the noise.
Or paste an OfferUp search link you already use. Each listing comes back with title, price, condition, category, town and state, post date, whether the price is firm, the photo and, for cars, make, model, year, trim and mileage.
2. Switch on "Only new listings"
Tick Only new listings (feed mode). The first run returns everything that matches. Every later run of the same search returns only listings no earlier run delivered, each with a firstSeenAt time. Listings you have already seen are skipped and not charged.
3. Send it to Discord
In Discord: Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook → Copy Webhook URL. Paste that URL into Alert webhook URL. Whenever new listings turn up, the Actor posts the count and the first five listings to your channel. Slack webhooks work the same way, and the task's Integrations tab can also send e-mail or fill a Google Sheet.
4. Put it on a timer
Save the input as a task, then Schedules → Create new schedule. Use 0 * * * * for every hour, or 0 7 * * * for a daily morning digest. Done: your phone buzzes when a new deal appears, and stays quiet when nothing changed.
What it costs
You pay per listing delivered: $1.50 per 1,000 listings on the free Apify plan, less on higher plans, with listing details included at no extra charge. In feed mode only new listings are charged. If 15 new listings turn up per day, that is about $0.02 a day. A day with nothing new costs nothing.
Why this beats refreshing the app
- You watch several keywords and several towns in one run.
- You never see the same listing twice.
- The data lands as a spreadsheet too, so you can sort by price and spot the items priced below the rest, or check what a model really sells for before you buy.
Set up your OfferUp deal alert. The form is prefilled, and the first run takes about a minute.
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