Whisky Auctioneer APIwhiskyauctioneer.com ↗
Access live auction pricing, lot details, and auction listings from Whisky Auctioneer. Current bids, reserve prices, bid counts, and bottle metadata via 3 endpoints.
What is the Whisky Auctioneer API?
The Whisky Auctioneer API gives developers access to live auction data across 3 endpoints covering auctions, lot search, and individual lot details. The search_lots endpoint returns real-time fields including current_bid_gbp, next_bid_gbp, reserve_gbp, reserve_met, and bids_placed for every lot in a given auction. Bottle metadata — distillery, age, vintage, cask type, ABV, and bottle size — is available at both search and lot-detail level.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/b31100ad-9cc5-47e1-a17a-bdbf240b39ca/list_auctions?page=1' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Lists Whisky Auctioneer auctions (live, upcoming and past) as shown on the site's auctions page, newest first, about 40 per page. Each row carries the auction_slug consumed by search_lots, its status (live | upcoming | past), type and start/end dates as printed on the site (e.g. '07 September 2026'). One request per call; has_more tells whether a further page exists. Only live auctions expose bid pricing through search_lots.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| page | integer | Zero-based page of the auction listing. Omit for the first page (which holds the live and upcoming auctions). |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"page": "integer, the page returned",
"auctions": "array of auction rows: auction_slug (key for search_lots), name, status (live|upcoming|past), auction_type, start_date, end_date",
"has_more": "boolean, whether a next page exists"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"page": 0,
"auctions": [
{
"name": "August 2026 Auction",
"status": "live",
"end_date": "07 September 2026",
"start_date": "28 August 2026",
"auction_slug": "august-2026-auction",
"auction_type": "Monthly Auction"
},
{
"name": "July 2026 Auction",
"status": "past",
"end_date": "10 August 2026",
"start_date": "31 July 2026",
"auction_slug": "july-2026-auction",
"auction_type": "Monthly Auction"
}
],
"has_more": true
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the Whisky Auctioneer API
Auctions and Lot Browsing
The list_auctions endpoint returns paginated auction rows ordered newest first, roughly 40 per page via a zero-based page parameter. Each row carries the auction_slug field, which is the key passed to search_lots, along with the auction status (live, upcoming, or past), auction_type, and start_date/end_date as shown on the site. This lets you programmatically identify which auctions are currently active before querying their lots.
Searching and Filtering Lots
search_lots takes an auction_slug from list_auctions and returns paginated lot rows with live pricing. Inputs include keyword for free-text search within the auction, sort for result ordering, and per_page to control how many lots are returned per page. Each lot row includes current_bid_gbp, next_bid_gbp, reserve_gbp, reserve_met, and bids_placed, as well as metadata fields: bottler, bottled year, size, ABV, sale location (UK or EU), and the lot_path key used by get_lot. The response also reports bid_lookup_failures — the count of lots on that page whose bid data could not be resolved — and the total matching lots across all pages.
Lot Detail
get_lot accepts a lot_path exactly as returned in search_lots results and returns the full lot record: a details object whose keys mirror the site's attribute labels (Distillery, Age, Vintage, Region, Bottler, Cask type, Bottle count, and others that vary per lot), image_url, bids_placed, reserve_gbp, reserve_met, location, and the site's numeric auction_id. The details object keys are not fixed — they reflect whatever attributes the site records for that specific bottle.
Coverage Notes
Hammer prices from closed auctions are only visible to logged-in users on the Whisky Auctioneer site and are not returned by any endpoint. The API is scoped to live, upcoming, and past auction listings and the lots within them.
The Whisky Auctioneer API is a managed, monitored endpoint for whiskyauctioneer.com — not a raw scraper you maintain. Every endpoint is automatically health-checked on a schedule, and when whiskyauctioneer.com changes and a check fails, the API is automatically queued for repair and re-verified. It is built to keep working as the site underneath it changes.
This isn't an official whiskyauctioneer.com API — it's an independent, maintained REST wrapper over public data. Where the source has no official API (or only a limited one), Parse gives you a stable contract over a source that never promised one, and keeps it current. Need a new endpoint or field? You can revise it yourself in plain English and the agent rebuilds it against the live site in minutes — contributing the change back to the shared API is free.
Will this API break when the source site changes?+
Is this an official API from the source site?+
Can I fix or extend this API myself if I need a new endpoint or field?+
What happens if I call an endpoint that has an issue?+
- Track real-time bid activity and reserve status across all lots in a live Whisky Auctioneer auction
- Build a price-alert tool that monitors
current_bid_gbpandreserve_metfor specific bottles by keyword - Aggregate lot metadata (distillery, vintage, cask type, ABV) to analyse which bottle attributes correlate with higher bid counts
- Compare
reserve_gbpagainstcurrent_bid_gbpacross lots to surface lots trading near or below reserve - Enumerate upcoming auctions via
list_auctionsand pre-populate a watchlist before bidding opens - Fetch
image_urland structureddetailsfromget_lotto display bottle profiles in a third-party app - Monitor
bid_lookup_failuresto assess data completeness before downstream processing
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 200 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 100 req/min |
| Team | $300/mo | 20,000 | 300 req/min |
| Company | $1,000/mo | 100,000 | 500 req/min |
Each endpoint has a fixed posted price per successful call — most fall between 1 and 10 credits — shown on this API's page before you run it. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does Whisky Auctioneer have an official developer API?+
What does `search_lots` return, and how do I narrow results to a specific bottle?+
search_lots returns one row per lot including current_bid_gbp, next_bid_gbp, reserve_gbp, reserve_met, bids_placed, bottler, bottled year, ABV, size, and lot_path. Pass a keyword string to filter lots within the auction by title or description, and use auction_slug (from list_auctions) to target a specific auction. Omitting auction_slug defaults to the currently live auction.Are hammer prices or sold-lot results available for past auctions?+
current_bid_gbp, reserve_gbp, bids_placed) for active auctions and descriptive metadata for all lots. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a hammer-price endpoint if that data becomes accessible.Is bid history or a list of individual bidders returned by any endpoint?+
bids_placed, current_bid_gbp, and next_bid_gbp — but not a per-bid history or bidder identifiers. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to add a bid-history endpoint if you need that granularity.Why might some lot rows have a non-zero `bid_lookup_failures` count?+
bid_lookup_failures reports how many lots on the returned page could not have their live bid data resolved. This can occur when a lot's pricing information is temporarily unavailable. Lots with failures will be missing live pricing fields for that request; retrying the same page typically resolves transient failures.