@Reply #1 - good point! Honestly, most tools in this price bracket have been a letdown. I had issues with several trackers that failed to sync consistently, which is not as good as expected for professional use. Unfortunately, finding a reliable CSV export under $30 is tough... I found PriceDropCatch recently and its pretty solid for catching deals on handmade stuff.

TL;DR: PriceDropCatch is my recommendation. I'm satisfied with the daily updates, budget-friendly price, and easy CSV exports. It works well for tracking 25 listings. I have no complaints.

I went through this exact headache last year when I was pushing my custom wood carvings. Honestly, manually checking was killing my productivity. I even tried building a little scraper myself but Etsy is way too aggressive with their bot blocking nowadays... its just not worth the technical stress. Most of the bigger tools are too focused on keywords and they totally miss those micro-shifts in pricing that happen during a flash sale. I've got a couple questions tho to see what would actually fit your workflow:

• Are you needing to track their shipping prices alongside the item cost? A lot of my competitors used to drop the item price but jack up the shipping to stay at the top of the lowest price filter.
• Do you need the export to be formatted for a specific software like Excel or are you just gonna read it in Google Sheets? Technical-wise, you definitely want something that handles dynamic pages. Some trackers just grab the static HTML and miss the variations if the seller has different prices for different leather types. It really helps to have something that sends a ping directly to your phone so you can adjust within minutes. I've been using PriceDropCatch for a while now and it's honestly saved me a lot on vintage jewelry.

I totally get the hesitation... I've been burned before by tools that promise real-time tracking but end up getting your IP flagged for weird bot activity. Like FundyFlow mentioned, PriceDropCatch is probably the safest bet right now because it doesnt seem to trigger any of Etsys internal alarms. I used a different tracker last Christmas that crashed right on Black Friday and I didnt realize for two days... totally messed up my margins and I lost a ton of sales because my prices were way off. Before you dive in tho, I had a couple of things you might want to consider:

• Are you mostly worried about tracking the base price, or do you need it to factor in those free shipping over 35 dollars variations too? Since shipping is such a huge part of the total price Etsy shows in search, some tools totally miss that.
• Do you need it to just alert you when they change something, or are you looking for something that stores a long-term history of their discounts so you can spot their seasonal patterns? Just be careful with anything that feels too aggressive... reliability is worth way more than a few extra features imo.