How to Track Competitor Prices on eBay Without Blocks: Setting Up Proxies for Scraping

If you sell on eBay, you know: success depends on proper pricing. But eBay actively blocks automated data collection — when trying to check competitor prices in bulk, you will encounter a CAPTCHA or a temporary IP ban. In this guide, we will discuss how to set up proxies for safe competitor monitoring and automate data collection without the risk of getting blocked.

Why eBay Blocks Scraping and How It Works

eBay uses a multi-layered protection system against automated data collection. The platform is interested in having users interact with the site as real buyers, not as bots collecting information for competitive analysis.

Main Methods of Scraping Detection on eBay:

• IP Address Tracking: if too many requests come from one IP in a short time (usually more than 50-100 product views per hour), the system marks it as suspicious.
• Behavior Analysis: bots open pages too quickly (less than 2-3 seconds per page), do not move the mouse, do not scroll the page.
• User-Agent Check: outdated or suspicious browser headers trigger additional verification.
• Browser Fingerprinting: eBay collects data on screen resolution, installed fonts, time zone — discrepancies indicate bot usage.
• CAPTCHA and Challenge: when suspicious, the system shows a CAPTCHA or asks to confirm that you are not a robot.

Consequences of Scraping Detection:

• Temporary IP ban (from a few hours to a day)
• Displaying CAPTCHA on every page
• Limiting access to search results (showing only the first 10-20 products)
• In extreme cases — blocking the seller's account if scraping is done from an authorized account.

That’s why it is critically important to use proxies for regular competitor monitoring — they allow distributing requests among multiple IP addresses, simulating the behavior of different users from various locations.

Which Type of Proxy to Choose for eBay Monitoring

The choice of proxy type depends on the scale of monitoring, budget, and data collection speed requirements. Let’s discuss three main options and their applications for working with eBay.

Data Center Proxies: Fast but Risky

Data centers are the fastest and cheapest option, but eBay is well aware of the IP ranges of popular hosting providers. Such addresses are often already blacklisted or attract increased attention from anti-fraud systems.

When to Use:

• One-time data collection for a small list of products (up to 100-200 items)
• Testing the scraper before launching on residential proxies
• Monitoring your own listings (not competitors)
• Working with eBay API (if you have official access)

For regular competitor monitoring, data centers are not suitable — you will quickly exhaust the pool of "clean" IPs and start receiving blocks.

Residential Proxies: Optimal Choice for Monitoring

Residential proxies use IP addresses from real internet providers (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and others). For eBay, such requests appear as ordinary users browsing products from home.

Advantages for eBay Scraping:

• Minimal Risk of Blocking: residential IPs rarely get blacklisted, as they are addresses of ordinary users.
• Geographical Accuracy: you can choose proxies from a specific city or state — this is important if you sell local products.
• Large Pool of Addresses: quality providers offer millions of IPs, allowing you to scale monitoring.
• Automatic Rotation: you can set up IP changes after each request or on a timer.

Optimal Settings for eBay:

• IP Rotation: after every 20-30 requests or every 5-10 minutes
• Geolocation: USA (the main eBay market) or the country of your target audience
• Sticky sessions: 5-15 minutes (to keep the IP unchanged when navigating between product pages)
• Delay between requests: 3-8 seconds (to simulate a real user)

Mobile Proxies: Maximum Trust but Expensive

Mobile proxies use IPs from mobile operators (4G/5G). For eBay, this is the most trusted type of traffic, as most buyers access the platform via smartphones.

When to Use Mobile Proxies:

• Your main IP or residential proxies are already blacklisted by eBay.
• You are monitoring competitors from an authorized seller account (maximum security required).
• You need to collect data from the mobile version of eBay (it sometimes shows different prices and promotions).
• You are working with highly protected product categories (electronics, premium brands).

The downside of mobile proxies is the high price (3-5 times more expensive than residential) and lower speed. For most competitor monitoring tasks on eBay, they are excessive.

What Can Be Monitored: Prices, Stock, Seller Ratings

Monitoring competitors on eBay is not just about tracking prices. To make the right business decisions, you need to collect comprehensive data about the market. Let’s discuss which metrics are worth tracking and how to use them.

1. Price Monitoring and Change Dynamics

This is the primary task for most sellers. You need to know at what price competitors are selling similar products to remain competitive.

What to Track:

• Current Buy It Now Price: the current price of the product at the time of checking.
• Auction Price: starting bid and current price (if the product is sold via auction).
• Shipping Cost: many sellers underprice the product but overcharge for shipping — you need to calculate the total cost.
• Discounts and Promotions: temporary promotions like "10% off" or "Buy 2 Get 1 Free."
• Change History: how often the competitor changes the price (daily, weekly).

How to Use the Data: If you see that a competitor lowered the price by 15% on Friday evening, this may be preparation for a weekend sale. You can react in advance and also launch a promotion to avoid losing sales.

2. Monitoring Product Availability and Sales Speed

eBay shows the number of available units and the number sold. This data helps understand how well a product is selling among competitors.

What to Collect:

• Quantity Available: how many units of the product are left in stock.
• Sold Count: how many units have already been sold (eBay shows this for popular listings).
• Watchers: how many users have added the product to their favorites (an indicator of interest).
• Listing Publication Date: how long the product has been listed for sale.

Example of Use: You are tracking a competitor's listing and see that they sold 50 units of the product at $29.99 over the last 3 days. This means that demand for the product is high, and you can increase your purchases. If the number of sold units hasn’t changed for weeks, this is a signal of low demand or incorrect positioning.

3. Analyzing Seller Ratings and Reviews

The seller's rating directly affects conversion. Buyers prefer sellers with a high feedback score and Top Rated Seller status.

Metrics to Track:

• Feedback Score: total number of positive reviews.
• Positive Feedback Percentage: percentage of positive reviews (norm — 98%+).
• Detailed Seller Ratings: ratings by categories (shipping speed, description accuracy, communication).
• Top Rated Seller Badge: presence of the top seller badge.
• Number of Reviews in the Last 12 Months: shows seller activity.

Why This Matters: If your main competitor has Top Rated status and 5000+ reviews, while you only have 200, even at the same price, buyers will choose them. You either need to lower your price to compensate for the trust difference or actively work on accumulating reviews.

4. Monitoring Search and Category Positions

The position of a product in eBay search results is critical for sales. Products on the first page receive 80% of clicks.

What to Track:

• Competitor's position in search for key queries (e.g., "wireless headphones bluetooth").
• Presence in recommended products (Featured items).
• Position in category (e.g., Electronics → Headphones → In-Ear).
• Use of Promoted Listings (paid promotion).

To track positions, you need to scrape search results for key queries and record the position of each competitor. This allows you to understand who is investing in SEO and advertising and who relies solely on organic traffic.

Proxy Setup for Scraping: Step-by-Step Instructions

Let’s discuss the practical setup of proxies for monitoring eBay. Regardless of whether you use a ready-made scraper or write your own script, the principles of operation are the same.

Step 1: Choosing and Purchasing Proxies

For monitoring eBay, we recommend residential proxies with geography in the USA (as this is the main market for the platform). When choosing a provider, pay attention to:

• IP Pool Size: at least 1-2 million addresses for comfortable rotation.
• Support for Sticky Sessions: ability to keep one IP for 5-15 minutes.
• Geographical Accuracy: ability to choose a city or state (important for local products).
• Authorization Format: it’s easier to work with username:password than with IP whitelist.

After purchase, you will receive connection data in the format:

Host: proxy.example.com
Port: 12321
Username: user_abc123
Password: pass_xyz789

Step 2: Setting Up Proxies in the Scraper or Script

Most ready-made scrapers (Octoparse, ParseHub, Apify) have built-in support for proxies. You just need to enter the data in the settings.

Example of Setup in Popular Tools:

If you are using your own script, connecting proxies depends on the programming language. For most eBay monitoring tasks, Python (libraries requests, Selenium) or Node.js (Puppeteer, Playwright) are used.

Step 3: Setting Up User-Agent and Headers

Using proxies is only half the battle. eBay also analyzes HTTP request headers. If you use an outdated User-Agent or send requests without standard headers, this will raise suspicion.

Mandatory Headers for eBay Scraping:

• User-Agent: use the latest version of Chrome or Firefox (update every 2-3 months).
• Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8.
• Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9 (for the USA) or ru-RU,ru;q=0.9 (for Russia).
• Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br.
• Referer: https://www.ebay.com/ (for subsequent requests).

Tip: Use User-Agent rotation — change it every 50-100 requests. This simulates different users with different browsers.

Step 4: Testing Settings

Before launching full-scale monitoring, be sure to test the settings on a small sample of products (10-20 items).

Testing Checklist:

1. Check the IP address: open the page https://api.ipify.org/ in the scraper — it will show the current IP. Make sure this is the proxy IP, not your real one.
2. Check the geolocation: open https://www.ebay.com/ and check which country is detected (should match the proxy's geolocation).
3. Collect data on 20 products: run the scraper and check if all data is collected correctly (price, availability, rating).
4. Check for CAPTCHA presence: if a CAPTCHA appeared during the test run, it means the settings are not secure enough.
5. Measure speed: time the data collection for 100 products — this will help plan the monitoring frequency.

Tools for Automating Competitor Monitoring

For regular competitor monitoring on eBay, it is not necessary to write code from scratch. There are ready-made tools that simplify data collection and integrate with proxies.

Visual Scrapers (No-Code Solutions)

These tools allow you to set up scraping through a graphical interface — you simply click on the elements of the page that need to be collected.

Recommendation: For beginners, Octoparse is the best fit — it has ready-made templates for scraping eBay, and setup takes 15-20 minutes. For more experienced users, Apify provides more flexibility and customization options through JavaScript.

Specialized Services for Price Monitoring

If you only need price monitoring (without collecting other data), there are ready-made SaaS solutions:

• Keepa: originally for Amazon, but supports eBay. Tracks price history, shows change graphs.
• PriceYak: automatic repricing based on competitor prices. Integrates with eBay API.
• Algopix: market analysis for sellers, shows competitor prices, demand, profitability.

These services already have built-in proxy infrastructure, so you don’t need to set them up yourself. The downside is limited customization and higher prices.

Setting Up a Monitoring Schedule

The frequency of monitoring depends on the product category and market dynamics:

• Highly Competitive Niches (electronics, clothing): 2-3 times a day (morning, noon, evening).
• Medium Competition (home goods, sports): once a day.
• Low Competition (collectibles, rare parts): 2-3 times a week.

Most cloud scrapers (Octoparse, ParseHub, Apify) allow you to set up automatic launches on a schedule. Data can be exported to Google Sheets, Excel, or sent via email.

IP Rotation Strategy and Safe Request Limits

Proper IP rotation is key to long-term monitoring without blocks. Let’s discuss how to set up rotation and what limits to follow.

Types of Proxy Rotation

There are two main approaches to IP rotation when scraping eBay:

Recommendation for eBay: Use sticky sessions with a duration of 10-15 minutes. This is the optimal balance between safety and speed. In 15 minutes, a real user can view 20-30 products — this is the pattern you need to simulate.

Safe Request Limits

eBay does not publish official limits for scraping, but based on seller experience, safe boundaries can be outlined:

Formula for Calculating the Number of IPs for Rotation:

Adding Randomness to Simulate Human Behavior

Bots operate too predictably. To make scraping look like the actions of a real user, add elements of randomness:

• Random Delays: instead of fixed 5 seconds, make the delay between 4 to 9 seconds (random).
• Different Order of Products: do not scrape products in the same sequence every time.
• Simulating Clicks: if using Selenium/Puppeteer, occasionally click on random elements (categories, filters).
• Page Scrolling: scroll down the page before collecting data (eBay tracks scroll events).

These small details significantly reduce the likelihood of automation detection.

Common Mistakes When Scraping eBay and How to Avoid Them

Even with properly configured proxies, you can get blocked if you make common mistakes. Let’s discuss the most frequent issues.

Mistake 1: Using the Same User-Agent

Many beginners set up proxies but forget about User-Agent rotation. As a result, thousands of requests from different IPs go with the same browser header — this is a red flag for eBay.

Solution: Create a list of 20-30 current User-Agents (Chrome, Firefox, Safari on Windows and macOS) and rotate them randomly. Update the list every 2-3 months when new browser versions are released.

Mistake 2: Scraping Too Quickly

The desire to collect data as quickly as possible leads to blocks. A real user cannot open 10 product pages per second.

Solution: Set a minimum delay of 4-5 seconds between requests. Yes, it’s slower, but it’s safer. If speed is needed — use parallel scraping with multiple IPs (launch multiple instances).

Conclusion: Properly configured proxies, combined with randomization and safe request limits, will help you effectively monitor competitors on eBay without getting blocked.