eBay sold data API
alternatives, compared.
There are half a dozen ways to get eBay sold prices, and most comparison pages are thinly veiled ads. This one is not. Below is an honest look at every real option in 2026 (Terapeak, eBay’s official APIs, self-scraping, Bright Data, and Apify) with actual prices, setup times, and where each one genuinely wins. We built CompSniper, so we have a horse in this race, but we will tell you exactly when the other tools are the right call.
Every option at a glance
Sold data means real completed-sale prices, not active asking prices. Setup is the time from signing up to your first useful result. Prices are the publicly listed rates as of 2026 and can change.
| Option | Type | Sold data? | Price | Setup | Real-time? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CompSniper You are here This site | Purpose-built REST API | Yes | Free, then $9 to $79/mo | 5 minutes | Yes |
Terapeak eBay Product Research | Seller Hub dashboard | Partial(Dashboard only, no API) | Free with an eBay account | Built into eBay | Dashboard only |
Marketplace Insights API eBay official | Official REST API | Yes | Free, if approved | Weeks of approval | Yes |
Browse API eBay official | Official REST API | No(Active listings only) | Free | OAuth plus app review | Active only |
Self-scraping Do it yourself | Code you build and run | Partial(If you can keep it alive) | Proxies plus your time | Weeks to months | Yes, until it breaks |
Bright Data Proxy platform | Proxies plus scraper builder | Partial(You build the parser) | Roughly $500+/mo | Days | Yes |
Apify actors Community scrapers | Marketplace of scrapers | Yes(Varies by actor) | Pay per compute unit | Hours | Varies |
One CompSniper request returns up to 240 sold listings across 8 eBay marketplaces, with roughly 90 days of history and 26 fields per item.
When each alternative is the right call
No single tool wins for everyone. Here is where each option shines and where CompSniper is the better fit, written plainly.
Terapeak (eBay Product Research)
Terapeak lives inside eBay Seller Hub as Product Research. It shows sold data with a generous window (up to three years) and is free with most eBay accounts. The catch is that it is a dashboard for humans, not a data source for software. There is no public API, no bulk export you can wire into a pricing model, and no way to pull the last 240 sales for 1,000 items programmatically. It is a lookup tool, not a pipeline.
You are a solo seller pricing items by hand inside eBay and you want the longest possible history for free.
You need sold prices inside your own app, spreadsheet, or automation, and you want clean JSON instead of clicking through a dashboard.
eBay official APIs (Marketplace Insights, Browse, and the retired Finding API)
eBay has three chapters here. The old Finding API returned completed listings and was the classic answer for years, but eBay decommissioned it, so any tutorial pointing you there is dead on arrival. The Browse API is alive and free, but it only returns active listings, not sold prices, so it cannot tell you what things actually went for. Marketplace Insights is the one official API that returns real sold data, and it is genuinely good, but it ships as a Limited Release that is not accepting new developers. Getting access means an approval process that can take weeks, assuming you are approved at all.
You already hold Marketplace Insights access, or you only need active listings and OAuth overhead does not bother you.
You want sold data today without waiting on an approval queue, and you would rather integrate against one stable GET endpoint than eBay OAuth and app review.
Self-scraping (DIY)
Writing your own scraper looks cheap on day one and expensive by month three. eBay's sold pages need a logged-in session, aggressive requests get blocked, and the HTML changes without warning. To make it reliable you end up running residential proxies, rotating authenticated accounts, classifying page types, and catching currency leaks, then babysitting the whole thing every time eBay ships a layout change. That is real engineering payroll spent on plumbing instead of your product.
Scraping is your core competency, you enjoy maintaining proxy infrastructure, and you have engineers to keep it running.
You want the same underlying result (real sold listings as clean JSON) without owning the proxy pool, the parser, or the 2 a.m. pages when eBay changes its markup.
Bright Data
Bright Data is a serious proxy and web-data platform. It gives you the raw capability to scrape almost anything, including eBay, through residential proxies and scraper builders. But it is infrastructure, not an eBay sold-comps product. You still design the collector, write the parser, normalize the fields, and keep it working, and you pay platform-scale prices (often several hundred dollars a month) for the privilege. It is a great fit for large teams scraping many sites, and overkill for someone who just wants sold prices.
You are scraping dozens of sites at scale and want one heavyweight platform for proxies and collection across all of them.
eBay sold prices are the specific thing you need, and you would rather pay for the finished answer than rent the tools to build it.
Apify actors
Apify hosts a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers (actors), including community eBay sold-listing actors. It is a nice middle ground: less work than building from scratch, more flexible than a fixed API. The trade-offs are that quality and freshness vary by actor and author, you are billed by compute usage rather than a predictable per-search quota, and you inherit whatever the actor maintainer decides to support. Our own Apify actor runs the same engine as this API for people who prefer that channel.
You already build workflows on Apify and want your eBay data to live alongside your other actors.
You want predictable pricing (pay per search, not per compute unit) and a first-party API contract that stays stable and versioned under /v1.
When to use what
Find the row that sounds like you and start there.
One GET request, clean JSON, live in 5 minutes on a free key.
Free inside Seller Hub with the longest history, if you never need an API.
It is the official sold-data source. Use it if you are already through the queue.
Free and official, but it will not tell you what anything actually sold for.
Own the pipeline if maintaining proxies and parsers is a job you want.
Keep eBay data next to your other actors, and accept usage-based billing.
If you just want the data, this is the fast path
No OAuth, no approval queue, no proxy pool, no XML. Pass a keyword with your API key and get back real sold listings as clean JSON. The contract stays stable and versioned under /v1, so what you build today keeps working.
- Live in about 5 minutes on a free key
- Pay per search, not per result or per compute unit
- Up to 240 real sold listings in a single request
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer cs_YOUR_KEY_HERE" \
"https://api.compsniper.com/v1/scrape?keyword=iphone+15+pro&count=10"Skip the comparison shopping
Start with 100 free requests a month. No credit card, instant API key, real sold prices in your first call.