BidProwl aggregates 75,000+ live government surplus listings from 27 sources into one searchable interface with deal scores, sold prices, and daily email alerts.
Key Takeaways
Covers GSA, GovDeals, PublicSurplus, Ritchie Bros, and 25 more sources; refreshed twice daily to surface new listings before most buyers.
Deal Score (1-10) factors price, bid velocity, and time remaining to flag underpriced lots without manual math.
Bidding stays on original auction platforms; BidProwl takes no cut and never intermediates bids.
Browse by state (Ohio leads with 6,400+ listings), category, or keyword; daily digest emails top-scored auctions each morning.
Buyer guides cover registration, inspection, freight, and platform comparisons to reduce costly first-timer mistakes.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters flagged immediate server instability under traffic load; state-level listing pages failed while the homepage stayed up, pointing to missing query caching and compute scaling.
Data quality concerns surfaced fast: one commenter found items bid 50% above market value, raising shill-bidding or uninformed-bidder risk that deal scores do not appear to filter for.
A prior nearly identical HN submission (GovAuctions, three weeks earlier) was called out, signaling crowded space and potential differentiation questions for builders evaluating this niche.
Notable Comments
@bbstats: Found Pokemon cards bid 50%+ above market, questioning whether deal scores account for shill bidding or blind bidders.
@1970-01-01: “US Gov auctions are great when you want 400 of something broken” – practical warning about lot sizes and logistics friction.
