The State of eBay Sold Data in 2026: A Dated Timeline

By SaleHistory Editorial · Published · 2 min read · eBay APIs & Sold Comps Access
Between 2020 and 2026 eBay closed every open route to sold-price data. findCompletedItems was restricted in October 2020, the Finding API was decommissioned on February 5, 2025, the February 2026 User Agreement banned LLM-driven bots, and from mid-2026 sold search results require signing in to an eBay account. The only official sold-data API, Marketplace Insights, remains Limited Release.
Timeline card of eBay sold-data changes from October 2020 to September 2026

This is our running log of every change that affects getting eBay sold prices into software. We keep it updated, and each entry links to the primary source we could find. Where sources disagree, we say so.

Timeline from October 2020 to September 2026: findCompletedItems restricted, Marketplace Insights last updated, Finding API deprecated and decommissioned, User Agreement bans LLM bots, sold search requires sign-in, SerpApi drops its sold filter
Six years, one direction.

The full timeline

DateChangeSource
Oct 15, 2020findCompletedItems deprecated; access restrictedeBay staff, Developer Community
Dec 2020Marketplace Insights reaches v1_beta.2.2, its last spec version. Still Limited ReleaseeBay OpenAPI spec
Jan 2024eBay announces the Finding and Shopping APIs will be decommissionedeBay Developer Community
Jan 2025ShelfTrend, a third-party eBay analytics app, announces shutdown citing "changes in eBay's API policies"Value Added Resource
Feb 5, 2025Finding API decommissioned. findCompletedItems stops working entirelyeBay staff
2025eBay's API License Agreement restricts feeding market-trend and sales data to third-party generative AIEcommerceBytes (reported)
Feb 20, 2026User Agreement update adds "buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots" to banned automated accessValue Added Resource
May 8, 2026First reports of signed-out sold searches redirecting to login (partial)r/Ebay
Jul 5, 2026New search results layout on part of eBay's trafficVendor reports
~Jul 22–25, 2026Sold and Completed searches require sign-in across major eBay sitesVendor reports, r/eBayCanada
Aug 2026eBay robots.txt v30.2 adds a "Robots & Agent Policy"; blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot site-wideebay.com/robots.txt
Aug 18, 2026Mobile/app sold search also gatedVendor reports
Sep 2026SerpApi marks its eBay Sold/Complete filters "deprecated and no longer supported"SerpApi docs
Oct 2026Sign-in wall still in place; result-page limits tightened on several sitesr/Ebay, vendor reports

What it adds up to

Three things are true in October 2026:

  1. There's no open official API for sold prices. Finding is gone, Browse is active-only, and Marketplace Insights is gated.
  2. Anonymous scraping of sold results no longer works. The sign-in wall means a scraper needs an eBay account, and the account takes the risk.
  3. AI tools can't read eBay sold prices directly. eBay's robots.txt blocks most AI crawlers, so assistants answering "what did this sell for?" have to rely on third-party sources.

What hasn't changed

  • eBay still shows signed-in users about 90 days of sold listings.
  • Terapeak (Product Research) is still free for sellers, with about three years of aggregates and no API.

How we keep this current

We re-check each entry when something changes and update the date at the top of the page. If you've seen a change we haven't logged, email hello@soldcomps.io with a link.

Frequently asked questions

When was the eBay Finding API decommissioned?

February 5, 2025. eBay announced the deprecation of the Finding and Shopping APIs in January 2024.

When did eBay start requiring sign-in for sold listings?

Reports of partial tests began May 8, 2026, and vendors report a broad rollout around July 22 to 25, 2026. eBay hasn't announced it.

Did SerpApi stop supporting eBay sold listings?

Yes. SerpApi's eBay Search API documentation marks the Sold and Complete options of show_only as deprecated and no longer supported.

Sources

  1. eBay Community: findCompletedItems does not work (deprecated Oct 15, 2020) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  2. eBay Community: Alert: Finding API and Shopping API to be decommissioned in 2025 (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  3. Value Added Resource: ShelfTrend shuts down citing eBay API changes (Jan 2025) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  4. Value Added Resource: eBay bans AI agents in User Agreement update (Feb 2026) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  5. eBay robots.txt (v30.2, August 2026) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  6. SerpApi: eBay Search API documentation (show_only) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)
  7. r/Ebay: Can no longer filter by sold items in search (May 8, 2026) (accessed Oct 22, 2026)

SaleHistory sells an eBay sold-listings API, so we have a commercial interest in this topic. We link primary sources so you can check our work. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@soldcomps.io.