Facebook Marketplace Alert Apps in Australia, Compared

What matters for an Australian buyer

Every alert tool does the same basic job. You describe the item you want, it checks Facebook Marketplace for new listings that match, and it tells you when one appears. The differences that matter in Australia are narrower than the feature lists suggest.

• Check speed on your important search. A good listing in Sydney or Melbourne rarely lasts the hour. How often the tool checks your most competitive search decides more than anything else on this list.
• City coverage. Australia is a handful of big cities a long way apart. There is no national Marketplace search, so a tool needs to handle one search per city or region cleanly. Our guide to searching Marketplace Australia-wide explains why.
• Currency. Most tools bill in US dollars, so the price on the page is not what lands on your card. Your bank converts it at its own rate and may add a foreign transaction fee.
• Gumtree. It is the one non-Facebook marketplace with real Australian volume. Whether you need it depends on what you buy, covered below.
• Relevance. A keyword match is not the item you wanted. A search for an iPhone matches cases, boxes and broken screens. The fewer of those that reach you, the faster you can act on the real ones.

Things that matter less than they look: marketplaces that barely exist here (Craigslist, OfferUp, Kijiji, Nextdoor), American vehicle features such as VIN title checks, and long lists of AI extras you will rarely open.

The five tools compared

All figures are from each vendor’s own public pages, checked 22 September 2026. Nothing here reflects hands-on testing of a competitor.

Swoopa’s pricing page does not name a currency. Marketplace Monitor lists prices in US dollars and pounds, with no Australian dollar option. Scout is the only one priced in Australian dollars, because it sells through the App Store, which bills locally.

Each tool in brief

Scout

Scout is an iPhone, iPad and Mac app for Facebook Marketplace, listed on the Australian App Store under the developer Matten Pty Ltd. Its store page describes instant notifications, AI filtering of spam and duplicates, and searching across several cities or regions at once. In-app subscriptions are listed at A$9.99, A$29.99 and A$89.99, but the store page does not spell out what each tier includes, so compare them inside the app before paying. There is no Android version, which rules it out for a large share of buyers.

Swoopa

Swoopa is run by Market Sourcing Solutions Pty Ltd and covers Facebook, Gumtree, eBay, Craigslist, OfferUp, Kijiji and Nextdoor. Its entry plan, Go, is $28 a month on a 12-month commitment for seven searches, on Facebook only and at its slowest alert speed. Turbo ($99 on six months, $144 monthly) and Nitro ($199 on six months, $352 monthly) add the other marketplaces, faster alerts and AI extras. The speed tiers are named rather than timed. Our Swoopa review goes through it in full.

Flipify

Flipify charges per watchlist: $5 USD a month for one checked every 10 minutes, $10 for one checked every minute. It covers Facebook, Gumtree, eBay, Vinted, Mercari and three North American sites, and delivers by phone notification. It is the cheapest way to run one fast search; the Flipify review works out what five and ten searches cost.

Marketplace Monitor

Marketplace Monitor sells plans by number of searches and “find time”: $24.99 USD for one search at 5 minutes, $44.99 for three at 3 minutes, $99.99 for five at 2 minutes, and $169.99 for five at “instant”. It lists Gumtree among its marketplaces and has iOS and Android apps. See Marketplace Monitor alternatives for the detail.

Outpost Alerts

Outpost Alerts is an Australian-built service that watches Facebook Marketplace for new listings matching your keywords and sends them to a web dashboard or Discord. Basic is $14.99 USD a month for one watchlist checked every 30 minutes, Standard $39 for five with one at 3 minutes, and Pro $79 for ten with one every minute and the rest at 3 minutes or slower.

Do you need Gumtree coverage?

Gumtree is the reason an Australian might reasonably pick a multi-marketplace tool, so it deserves a straight answer.

In most everyday categories — phones, furniture, tools, bikes, consoles and household goods — Facebook Marketplace is where the bulk of Australian private-seller listings now appear. Gumtree still carries listings, and some sellers post to both, but for these categories it is the smaller pool.

Gumtree coverage is worth paying for if you know your category is still active there — some vehicle, trade and rural sellers stay loyal to it — or if you have found good deals there in the past month. The honest test is simple: search your item on Gumtree and on Marketplace for a week, and count where the underpriced listings appear. If Gumtree turns up nothing Marketplace did not, you do not need it.

The cost matters too. On Swoopa, Gumtree only comes with Turbo and Nitro, which start at $99 a month on a six-month commitment. Flipify and Marketplace Monitor include it at every price, but neither makes Gumtree the reason to choose them over a faster Facebook search.

Covering Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and beyond

Facebook Marketplace searches from one location and a radius. There is no “all of Australia” option in the app, and a large radius around one city does not reach the next one. So an Australian buyer who wants more than their own city needs one search per city.

Tools handle this differently. Scout’s store page says it can search several cities or regions at once, which is a genuine convenience if you work many cities and use an iPhone. On Outpost, each watchlist has one location and a radius from 5 to 500 km, so covering Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane means three watchlists. That fits comfortably on Standard (five watchlists) or Pro (ten), and it has an advantage: each city can have its own price ceiling and exclude words, which matters when prices differ between markets.

Before you add cities, ask whether you can actually collect from them. Freight on a couch from Perth to Sydney wipes out most bargains. For cars, interstate purchases bring rego transfer and roadworthy rules that differ by state; our guide to buying a car on Marketplace in Australia sets them out.

Why speed decides it

The reason any of these tools exists is that good listings are gone within the hour, and you cannot beat that by refreshing the app.

A well-priced listing follows a familiar pattern. The seller wants it gone this week. The first message arrives within minutes, a few more follow, and it is often marked pending before most buyers have seen it. The deal goes to whoever messaged first.

Sorting by newest listings helps while you are looking, but even checking ten times a day leaves gaps of an hour or more, and nobody keeps it up. Australian time zones make it worse: Perth runs two to three hours behind the east coast, so a listing posted after dinner in Perth lands late in the evening in Sydney, when most buyers have stopped looking.

That is why check speed on your most important search outweighs the number of marketplaces, apps or extras. A tool that checks every minute and hands you a clean match gives you minutes of head start. A tool that checks every 30 minutes, or whose speed is described only as “fast”, leaves you guessing.

Where Outpost Alerts fits

For Australian buyers who source on Facebook Marketplace, Outpost Alerts is the strongest all-round choice, for four reasons.

• Published speed. Outpost states its intervals in minutes: every minute on Pro, 3 minutes on Standard, 30 minutes on Basic, on your fastest watchlist. Several competitors describe their top tier as “instant” without saying what that means.
• Measured relevance filtering. Across 30,777 keyword-matching listings, Outpost discarded 38.6% as not the item searched for — 18,890 kept against 11,887 rejected. Add your own exclude words per watchlist on top of that.
• Delivery that suits a desk or a team. Matches arrive in a web dashboard where you can track what you buy and sell, or in a Discord channel a buying partner can read too.
• Built in Australia, priced for a real search load. $39 covers five watchlists, enough for three capital cities and two items. Pro at $79 covers ten.

What it does not do should be just as clear. Outpost watches Facebook Marketplace only, so no Gumtree or eBay. It bills in US dollars, not Australian dollars. It has no free plan (there is a 3-day trial), no price-drop alerts, no resale estimates and no auto-messaging. Each watchlist covers one location, so several cities means several watchlists. And for a single search, Flipify’s $10 one-minute watchlist is cheaper than Outpost Pro. If you need Gumtree weekly, a multi-marketplace tool may suit you; if your buying happens on Facebook, Outpost covers it best.

The verdict

All five tools work for Australian buyers, and each has a case. Scout is the only one priced in Australian dollars and handles several cities in one search, but it is Apple-only and does not publish what each tier includes. Swoopa is Australian-run and covers Gumtree, but only on plans from $99 a month. Flipify is the cheapest single fast search. Marketplace Monitor covers Gumtree at every tier but charges $24.99 for one search at 5 minutes.

For most Australian buyers working Facebook Marketplace, Outpost Alerts is the best choice overall: published one-minute checks, a measured relevance filter, dashboard and Discord delivery, and an entry price that gets you onto a dashboard product for $14.99. Run the trial on your own search in your own city and see how early the listings reach you.

For the global field, see the full Marketplace alert apps comparison.

FAQ

Sources checked

• Swoopa pricing and homepage: plans, searches, marketplaces, trial and company name, checked 22 September 2026.
• Flipify: per-watchlist pricing, intervals, marketplaces and trial, checked 22 September 2026.
• Marketplace Monitor pricing: plans, find times, marketplaces and trial, checked 22 September 2026.
• Scout on the Australian App Store: developer, platforms, in-app prices and features, checked 22 September 2026.

Marketplace features, fees, and policies change. Confirm current rules in Facebook's Help Center before relying on specific details.