Cross-Platform Price Arbitrage with a Search API

Resellers and arbitrage businesses manually check prices across Amazon and Walmart to find profitable spreads. At 50 products, this takes 2-3 hours per day. At 500 products, it is impossible manually. Automating the comparison with a search API that covers both platforms turns hours of manual work into a 15-minute review of pre-identified opportunities.

The two-query comparison

For each product, query Amazon and Walmart through the same API. Compare the returned prices. Flag products where the differential exceeds your minimum margin threshold. The same API key, the same response format, two platforms in two calls.

import requests, os

H = {'x-api-key': os.environ['SCAVIO_API_KEY']}

def compare_prices(product: str) -> dict:
    amazon = requests.post('https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search', headers=H,
        json={'platform': 'amazon', 'query': product}, timeout=10).json()
    walmart = requests.post('https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search', headers=H,
        json={'platform': 'walmart', 'query': product}, timeout=10).json()
    a_price = amazon.get('organic', [{}])[0].get('price')
    w_price = walmart.get('organic', [{}])[0].get('price')
    return {
        'product': product,
        'amazon': a_price,
        'walmart': w_price,
        'spread': abs(a_price - w_price) if a_price and w_price else None
    }

Monitoring frequency matters

Prices change throughout the day. A profitable spread at 9am may disappear by noon. For high-velocity products (electronics, seasonal items), check hourly. For stable categories (home goods, books), daily is sufficient. The cost per check is $0.01 (two API calls), so even hourly monitoring for 100 products is $24/day.

Alert on opportunities, not raw data

Do not review 500 price comparisons every day. Set a margin threshold (e.g., 15%) and only review products that exceed it. Send alerts to Slack or email when new opportunities appear or existing margins shrink below profitability. The automation identifies opportunities; you execute the ones worth pursuing.

Beyond simple spreads

Combine price data with review data. A product that is cheaper on Walmart but has 4.8 stars on Amazon is a different opportunity than one that is cheaper but poorly rated. Rating and review count are in the same search response, so the enrichment comes for free with the price check.