Settings

These are app wide settings that allow you to configure how PriceBuddy behaves.

Scraper settings

These settings control how the scraper behaves. The scraper is responsible for fetching the product details from the product URL.

Fetch schedule - A cron expression that defines when prices get auto-updated. The default is 0 6 * * * which is 6am every day. This is the global schedule; individual products can override it with their own check frequency or be paused entirely.

Scrape cache ttl - When a page is scraped, it will be cached for this amount of time. This is to prevent scraping the same page multiple times in a short period. This value is in minutes with the default of 720 minutes (12 hours).

Seconds to wait before fetching next page - To avoid being blocked by the store, we wait this amount of seconds before fetching the next page. The default is 10 seconds.

Max scrape attempts - If the scraper fails to fetch the page, it will retry this amount of times. The default is 3 attempts.

Locale

This is default locale settings for the app, it's primary use is for the scraper to know what format the currency is and what currency to use. This will be used as the default when creating a store and auto store creation.

Locale - This should match the locale/language of the stores you are scraping. Eg. en_US for English (United States) or fr_FR for French. Currency - This should match the currency of the stores you are scraping. Eg. USD for US Dollars or EUR for Euros.

NOTE: You can also override this per store, but mixing currencies on the same product results in incorrect price comparisons and aggregates.

Logging

Log retention days - The amount of days to keep logs for. The default is 30 days.

Notifications

This is where global notification settings are configured. For a notification service to work, it must first be enabled, then the appropriate settings added.

Email - Configure the SMTP settings for sending emails.

Pushover - Configure the Pushover application token for sending push notifications.

Gotify - Configure the Gotify server URL and application token for sending and testing push notifications.

Apprise - Configure the Apprise API server URL and configuration token.

Telegram - Configure the bot token used to send messages. Create a bot with @BotFather and paste the token here. Each user then adds their own chat ID in their account settings. Use the Test bot token button to verify the token is valid.

Discord - Optionally configure a default channel webhook URL. Each user can override this with their own webhook in their account settings. Use the Test button to send a sample message.

ntfy - Optionally configure a server URL (leave blank to use the public ntfy.sh) and, for protected self-hosted servers, a username and password. Each user subscribes to their own topic in their account settings.

Note: these are global settings, each user must enable the notification method in their own account settings. Depending on the notification method, they may also need to configure additional settings (such as their Telegram chat ID, ntfy topic, or a personal Discord webhook).

Integrations

This is where you can configure integrations with other services.

SearchXNG

SearXNG is a self-hostable search engine that can be used to research products and add them to PriceBuddy. To use this feature, you must have a SearXNG instance and PriceBuddy must be able to access it. Additionally SearXNG must be configured to allow returning results as JSON (See the SearXNG documentation).

You can a search prefix which will get added to each search query. Eg "Buy australia" is what I use.
By default SearchXNG returns 30 items per page but here you can set how many pages to process if you want more results. Default is 1.

AI providers

PriceBuddy can optionally use AI to recover missing prices and repair store scraping rules. This is disabled by default and only runs once you configure at least one provider here.

Add one or more providers - Each provider has a type (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or Ollama), a model, and — for cloud providers — an API key. API keys are encrypted at rest. Use the per-row Test button to check a provider is reachable before saving.
Default provider - Choose which provider is used by default.
Per-feature provider - Optionally pick a different provider for each feature (price Extraction and self-Healing), or turn an individual feature off entirely.

Ollama lets you run a model locally with no per-request cost — set the base URL (e.g. http://localhost:11434) and pick a model from the dropdown. Local models can be slower to respond, so allow a generous timeout.

Once a provider is configured, enable the features per store on the store edit page.