Apify gas price monitoring

Gas Price Monitoring: Track Per-Station Prices Across Locations

Monitor gas prices with the Apify Fuel Prices Scraper. Poll a watchlist of ZIP codes or cities on a schedule, snapshot one row per station with cash and credit prices and their posted timestamps, and diff snapshots to catch price moves, spreads, and undercutting.

When to use this skill

• The user wants gas price monitoring or fuel price monitoring across one or more locations.
• They want price-change alerts, a fuel price dashboard feed, or a recurring competitive scan of nearby stations.
• They manage a fleet or delivery routes and want to watch diesel or E85 prices along them.
• They ask to "track gas prices", "watch fuel prices", or "tell me when prices change".

Not for: historical backfill (live prices only, history starts when your polling starts), national or state averages (per-station only), or one-off single lookups (use the gas-prices-api skill).

What each snapshot returns (one row per station)

id, name, priceUnit, starRating, ratingsCount, address_line1, address_line2, address_locality, address_region, address_postalCode, price_cash, price_cash_postedTime, price_credit, price_credit_postedTime, and distance (returned null on ZIP searches in testing). id is the join key between snapshots; the postedTime fields tell you whether a price actually moved since your last poll. Prices of 0 or null mean no recent report for that payment type.

Prerequisites

• Apify account (sign up at https://apify.com?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo).
• Authentication via apify login, or an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable (Apify Console, Settings, Integrations).

The Actor

• Store page: https://apify.com/johnvc/fuelprices?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Actor ID: johnvc/fuelprices
• Pricing: pay per station result returned (see references/gotchas.md).

Run it with the Apify CLI

One monitoring poll of a ZIP, fresh prices only:

apify actors call "johnvc/fuelprices" -i '{"search":"75201","fuel":1,"maxAge":2}' \
  --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-gas-price-monitoring \
  2>/dev/null

Read a finished poll's rows later, for example from a scheduled run:

apify datasets get-items <DATASET_ID> --format json --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-gas-price-monitoring 2>/dev/null

Every call carries the three flags this repo expects: --json (or --format json), --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-gas-price-monitoring, and 2>/dev/null.

Run it from Claude or another AI agent (MCP)

The Actor is MCP-ready. Add the hosted server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=actors,docs,johnvc/fuelprices

Then ask, for example: "Check diesel prices in ZIP codes 75201 and 76102 and tell me which stations dropped since yesterday." MCP setup docs: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp

Workflow

1. Define the watchlist. One Actor input per location: search (ZIP, city, or "lat, lon") plus the fuel code to track (1 Regular, 2 Midgrade, 3 Premium, 4 Diesel, 5 E85, 12 Unleaded88). Separate fuels are separate calls.
2. Keep polls fresh. Set maxAge (1 to 3 days) so stale stations drop out instead of polluting diffs; it also trims billed rows.
3. Estimate cost per poll and per month, then confirm with the user. See references/gotchas.md.
4. Poll and snapshot. Run one call per watchlist entry, stamp rows with your own poll time, and store them keyed on id.
5. Diff and alert. Join the new snapshot to the previous one on id, compare price_cash and price_credit, and use the postedTime fields to separate real price moves from unchanged reports. Treat 0 or null prices as no data, not as a price drop.
6. Schedule it. Wrap the same inputs in an Apify Schedule or a cron job; daily is enough for most retail fuel tracking.

Inputs

• search (string, required): ZIP code, city name, or "lat, lon" GPS coordinates, one location per call
• fuel (integer, default 1): 1 Regular, 2 Midgrade, 3 Premium, 4 Diesel, 5 E85, 12 Unleaded88
• maxAge (integer, days, default 0): freshness window for a monitoring poll; 1 to 3 days recommended
• lang (string, default "en"): only English is supported
• output_file (string): optional CSV filename for the copy written to run storage, must end in .csv

Cost

Billing is per station row returned, so cost per poll is (stations per location) times (locations). A single ZIP poll is usually a cent or two; a daily 10-ZIP watchlist runs on the order of a few dollars per month. Estimate with the live per-result price in references/gotchas.md before scheduling.

Honest limits

• This is a polled snapshot, not a push feed: your poll interval is your freshness, and history starts when your polling starts. No backfill.
• Per-station only: compute city or corridor averages yourself from the rows.
• Cash and credit report independently; a station can update one and not the other. Alert on each side separately.
• Station sets can shift slightly between polls; a station missing from one snapshot is not proof it closed.
• Coverage is US-first with some Canadian locations.

Troubleshooting

• Diffs full of "changes" that are not real: you compared prices without checking postedTime; only flag rows whose postedTime advanced.
• Stations flapping in and out of snapshots: raise maxAge slightly, or key your store on id and tolerate gaps.
• Empty poll for a small town: use the nearest ZIP code instead of the town name.

See references/gotchas.md for cost guardrails and error recovery, and references/actor-index.md for the Actor routing table.

Related location-data Actors

• Google Maps Places API, station phone, hours, and websites: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-places-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo
• Google Maps Directions API, routes and drive times between stations: https://apify.com/johnvc/google-maps-directions-api?fpr=9n7kx3&fp_sid=skillrepo