Competitor Price Intelligence Pipeline Powered by Web Scraping & Telegram Alerts

You've bookmarked that perfect gadget. You're waiting for the price to drop. You check it daily, sometimes twice. Then one day, you blink and the deal is gone. Someone else grabbed it while you were sleeping. Sound familiar?

Price tracking shouldn't feel like a part time job. What if your computer could watch those prices for you, alert you the moment something changes, and keep a detailed history of every fluctuation? That's exactly what this n8n workflow does, and the best part is you can build it yourself in an afternoon.

The Problem: Manual Price Checking is a Time Sink

Whether you're a savvy shopper hunting for deals, a reseller monitoring inventory costs, or a business keeping tabs on competitor pricing, manually checking prices is tedious and inefficient. You either spend hours refreshing product pages or you miss important price changes altogether.

This workflow transforms that entire process into a hands off system. Every morning at 8 AM, it automatically checks your list of products, compares current prices against historical data, and sends you instant Telegram notifications when prices change. All without you lifting a finger.

What You'll Need: Prerequisites and Key Components

Before diving into the workflow, let's gather what you need to get started.

API Credentials Required

• Google Sheets API: This stores your product list and price history. You'll need OAuth2 credentials to let n8n read and write to your spreadsheets.
• Telegram Bot API: For instant price alerts sent directly to your phone. Create a bot through BotFather on Telegram and grab your bot token and chat ID.

Key n8n Nodes in This Workflow

• Schedule Trigger: Kicks off the workflow automatically at 8 AM daily
• Google Sheets: Reads product data and logs price history
• Split in Batches: Processes products one at a time to avoid overwhelming servers
• Wait: Adds delays between requests for polite scraping
• HTTP Request: Fetches product page HTML
• HTML Extract: Pulls current price from page markup
• Code: Handles data transformation and price calculations
• IF: Filters for price changes only
• Telegram: Sends formatted alerts to your phone

Building Your Price Monitor: Step by Step

Step 1: Set Up Your Product Database

Create a Google Sheet with two tabs. The first tab, called "product_data", holds your master list of products. At minimum, you need two columns: product_url and price. Add the URLs of products you want to track and their current prices.

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The second tab, "price_tracking", becomes your historical log. It stores every price check with columns for timestamp, product_url, last_price, current_price, price_changed, and price_diff_pct. Think of it as your price diary.

Step 2: Configure the Scraping Pipeline

The workflow starts by fetching your product list from Google Sheets, then processes each product individually. Here's where the magic happens. The Split in Batches node ensures you're only checking one product at a time, while the Wait node adds a 20 second pause between requests. This keeps you under the radar and prevents your IP from getting blocked.

The HTTP Request node fetches each product page with custom headers that make your requests look like they're coming from a regular Firefox browser. It's a simple trick that makes web scraping much more reliable.

Step 3: Extract and Process Price Data

Once you have the HTML, the workflow uses a CSS selector to pinpoint the exact price element on the page. In this case, it targets ".price__regular > span.price-item--regular", but you'll adjust this based on your target website's structure.

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The extracted price comes in messy, with currency symbols and formatting. The Code node strips all that away, converting it to a clean number. It then pulls the last recorded price from your spreadsheet and compares the two values. The workflow calculates both whether the price changed and by what percentage.

Step 4: Smart Filtering and Notifications

Not every price check deserves an alert. The IF node acts as a gatekeeper, only letting changed prices pass through. This prevents notification spam and keeps your Telegram chat focused on what matters.

When a price does change, the workflow formats a detailed message. Price drops get a falling chart emoji, price hikes get a rising one. You see the old price, new price, percentage change, and a timestamp formatted in Indian Standard Time. The message gets sent directly to your Telegram, so you can act fast.

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Step 5: Update Records and Loop

After sending the alert, the workflow logs the price change to your tracking sheet for historical reference. It waits one minute to respect Google's rate limits, then updates the master product list with the new price. This ensures your next check has accurate baseline data.

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The workflow then loops back to process the next product in your list. It continues this cycle until every product has been checked, then goes dormant until 8 AM the next day.

Why This Workflow Changes the Game

The beauty of this automated price monitor extends far beyond personal shopping. E-commerce businesses use it to track competitor pricing and adjust their strategies in real time. Resellers monitor supplier costs to protect their margins. Market researchers gather pricing intelligence across entire product categories.

Because everything logs to Google Sheets, you build a rich dataset over time. You can spot pricing patterns, identify the best days to buy, and even predict future price movements. The historical tracking sheet becomes a goldmine of insights.

The workflow is also surprisingly flexible. Want to check prices every hour instead of daily? Change the schedule trigger. Need to track more products? Just add rows to your spreadsheet. Want alerts in Slack instead of Telegram? Swap out one node. The modular design of n8n makes customization straightforward.

Your Turn to Build

Manual price tracking is a relic of the past. With this workflow running in the background, you're always one step ahead. You catch deals before they vanish. You understand market dynamics without the grunt work. You make smarter purchasing decisions backed by real data.

The workflow might seem complex at first glance, but each piece serves a clear purpose. Start small with a handful of products, test your CSS selectors carefully, and watch as your automated price monitor comes to life. Before long, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

The products you want are waiting. The prices are changing. Your automated tracker is ready to watch them all. Time to stop checking manually and start monitoring smartly.