Product Pricing Scraper

Scrape, normalize, and compare product prices across e-commerce sites.

Quick Start

"Compare prices for [product name] across Amazon, eBay, and Walmart"
"Scrape pricing from [URL]"
"Track price changes for [product]"

Workflow

1. Identify target — accept product name (search across sites) or specific URL(s)
2. Scrape — use scripts/scrape_prices.py for each target
3. Normalize — strip currency symbols, unify units, convert currencies if needed
4. Compare — rank by price, flag outliers, compute average/median
5. Output — JSON or CSV via --format flag

Scraping Strategies

Static pages (most product listings)

Use web_fetch + cheerio-style parsing. No browser needed.

Dynamic pages (JS-rendered prices)

Use the browser tool with snapshot + act to navigate and extract.

Anti-bot considerations

• Randomize delays (2-5s between requests)
• Rotate User-Agent strings
• Respect robots.txt — check before scraping
• Limit concurrent requests per domain

Price Normalization

• Strip currency symbols and whitespace
• Convert per-unit pricing (e.g., "$2.99/oz" → unit price)
• Handle price ranges (take lowest)
• Flag "was/now" discounted prices — record both

Output Schema

{
  "query": "product name or url",
  "scraped_at": "ISO-8601",
  "results": [
    {
      "source": "amazon",
      "url": "https://...",
      "title": "Product Title",
      "price": 29.99,
      "currency": "USD",
      "unit_price": null,
      "original_price": 39.99,
      "in_stock": true,
      "rating": 4.5,
      "review_count": 1234
    }
  ],
  "summary": {
    "lowest": { "source": "amazon", "price": 29.99 },
    "highest": { "source": "walmart", "price": 34.99 },
    "average": 32.49,
    "median": 31.99
  }
}

Scripts

• scripts/scrape_prices.py — main scraper: accepts product name or URL list, outputs structured JSON
• See references/selectors.md for site-specific CSS selectors

Ethics & Compliance

• Respect robots.txt and rate limits
• Do not scrape behind login walls without explicit permission
• Do not collect personal data
• Check site ToS before bulk scraping