Runs on your own server · Telegram-controlled
Never miss another eBay auction.
GavelOwl watches eBay for new listings and your account activity, all from a Telegram chat. Auction sniping is built in too, currently paused - see below.
Option A - run in Terminal
curl -fsSL https://gavelowl.com/install/free | bashOption B - download the files
Download the .zipIncludes docker-compose.yaml, .env, README.md, and SETUP.md with the commands to run manually.
Three jobs, one bot
Turn any of them on or off whenever you want - nothing runs unless you've enabled it.
New listing alerts
Set search terms once, or change them anytime by chatting with the bot. Every matching listing across the eBay sites you pick gets pushed straight to Telegram, filtered to the seller countries you allow.
Account activity
New buyer or seller messages, completed sales, and fresh Best Offers on your own listings - the things you'd otherwise have to keep checking the eBay app for.
Auction sniping
Stage a bid, confirm it, and it fires seconds before the auction ends - timed so you don't get outbid by giving the room time to react. Nothing fires without an explicit /confirm.
Currently unavailable - eBay requires an app to be specifically authorized to place bids via its API, and this one doesn't have that authorization yet. Not a bug, and everything else here still works normally.
From license key to live alerts
The full setup guide walks through every step - this is the short version.
Get a license
One command, tied to your license key.
Run one install command
It pulls the image, and drops a ready docker-compose.yaml and .env template on your machine.
Add your eBay + Telegram credentials
That's the entire .env file. Nothing else to configure before your first docker compose up.
Configure everything by chatting with the bot
Search terms, marketplaces, allowed countries, which features run at all - all set with /settings commands, saved on a Docker volume. No redeploy to change what you're watching.
See it in action
Short walkthroughs of installing, configuring, and sniping your first auction.
💬
Try the real thing right now
A scripted demo bot with no eBay connection at all - poke at every command (/snipe,/watching,/settings, ...) and see exactly what it feels like, with zero risk.
Video walkthroughs, for when you'd rather watch:
"Installation walkthrough" video coming soon
Installation walkthrough
"Configuring alerts via Telegram" video coming soon
Configuring alerts via Telegram
"Sniping your first auction" video coming soon
Sniping your first auction
Built so a typo can't cost you money
A bid is real money with no undo. That's why /snipe only stages a bid - it takes an explicit /confirm within a time window before anything is actually scheduled to fire.
Why self-hosted beats a cloud sniper
Some services charge you a considerable amount of money while others like Gixen are (mostly) free, so you might not be choosing GavelOwl to save money - you're choosing it for what a shared cloud service structurally can't give you.
Total privacy
Cloud snipers need your eBay login or OAuth token sitting on their servers - if they ever get breached, your account goes with it. GavelOwl's credentials live in your own .env file, on your own hardware. Nothing ever leaves your machine.
No shared queue
Cloud snipers fire thousands of bids from the same data center at the exact same moment, and can lag under load. GavelOwl runs on your own connection - nobody else's bids are competing for the same pipe when yours needs to fire.
A 5-second Telegram flow
No dashboard, no login, no 2FA. See something mid-scroll in the eBay app? Share the link straight to your own bot, type /snipe 50, and get on with your day.
A residential IP, not a data center
Bids fire from your own home connection - indistinguishable from a person clicking "bid" at the last second, not from a server cluster marketplaces already watch closely.
"Why run GavelOwl instead of a free cloud sniper? Because centralized snipers require your login tokens, queue your bids with thousands of strangers, and force you to use old, clunky websites. GavelOwl gives you total data privacy, dedicated home-hardware speed, and lets you dominate auctions entirely through a private Telegram chat."
Free right now. Self-hosted, always.
GavelOwl runs as a Docker container on your own machine or server - your eBay and Telegram credentials never leave it.
Option A - run in Terminal
curl -fsSL https://gavelowl.com/install/free | bashOption B - download the files
Download the .zipIncludes docker-compose.yaml, .env, README.md, and SETUP.md with the commands to run manually.
Frequently asked questions
Is auction sniping working right now?+
No, it's temporarily paused. Placing a bid via eBay's API requires an application to be specifically authorized for it, and this one doesn't have that authorization yet - confirmed against a real auction, not a guess. Listing alerts, account activity, and /watching are all unaffected and work normally.
Does this place bids automatically without me approving them?+
No. /snipe only stages a bid - it doesn't schedule anything. You have to send /confirm within a time window for it to actually be scheduled. This exists specifically so a typo in the bid amount doesn't turn into a real, binding purchase. (Sniping is currently paused - see above.)
Can I run this on my iPhone or Android phone?+
Not the container itself - iOS and Android don't support Docker at all, so it needs a real always-on computer or a cheap VPS (roughly $4-6/month) to actually run on. But once it's running, everything you'd actually do day to day - getting alerts, /snipe, /watching, changing settings - happens entirely over Telegram, which has full native iPhone and Android apps. Your phone is genuinely the interface; it just isn't where the bot itself lives.
What eBay access does it need?+
Listing search uses eBay's app-only OAuth (App ID + Cert ID) - no access to your account. Account activity and sniping need a long-lived user token you generate once from eBay's Developer Portal, which is what lets it read your inbox and bid on your behalf.
Can I run it without sniping?+
Yes - every feature (listing search, messages, sales, offers, sniping) can be turned on or off independently at runtime with /enable and /disable, no restart required.
What happens if an eBay API token expires or breaks?+
After a few consecutive failures in the same category, the bot sends you an actual Telegram alert instead of failing silently - so a broken token doesn't just look like "nothing new happened" for weeks.
Does revoking my license stop my bot from running?+
It stops you from pulling new images or reinstalling - it doesn't reach into your Docker daemon and stop a container that's already running.