Made by Matt

Prowl: I Got Tired of Opening Nineteen Tabs, So I Built This

Prowl is a free sourcing dashboard for vintage hunters. One search box, nineteen marketplaces, live prices next to sold comps — and your list stays on your own phone. Here is what it does and why it works this way.

Owl & Twig Vintage6 min read

The short version

It is free and there is no account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to cancel.
One search box, nineteen marketplaces. Type once, open them all.
Price Check opens live listings next to eBay sold comps — what people are asking against what actually sold.
Your search list lives on your device, not on a server of mine. Back it up with a code you copy.
Built on a phone, for a phone. I use it standing in thrift aisles in Michigan.

Why it exists

I sell vintage. Which means a lot of my week is spent checking the same set of marketplaces for the same set of search terms, over and over, on a phone, usually with one hand, often while holding something breakable.

The routine was: open eBay, type the term, look. Open Etsy, type the term again, look. Facebook Marketplace, again. Mercari, again. By the eighth site I had usually forgotten what I was searching for and definitely mistyped it twice.

Prowl is that routine, collapsed into one screen. You type a term once and it opens every marketplace you have selected, each in its own tab, staggered so your browser does not block them.

The whole idea. One search box, nineteen marketplaces. Choose which ones you want, save the terms you hunt, and open them all at once.

What is actually in there

Feature	What it does
Omni-search	One term, every marketplace you have enabled. Tap the menu to switch any of them on or off.
Price Check	Opens the live search and eBay sold listings for the same term, so you can see asking versus selling side by side.
Hot List	Star the terms you check daily. The Daily Prowl button opens all of them in one tap.
Multi-select	Tick several saved terms and launch them together.
Regional hubs	Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist let you pick a city, or fire off a dozen at once. Detroit is my default.
Dim window	Terms you have already searched go faded for a few hours, so you do not repeat yourself mid-hunt.
Backup code	Copy your whole setup as a string of text. Paste it on another phone and everything comes across.

The nineteen

Goodwill, eBay, eBay Sold, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Mercari, OfferUp, Whatnot, Poshmark, Depop, Vinted, Chairish, 1stDibs, Ruby Lane, Shop App, Google Shopping, EstateSales.NET — and our own shop, because I built this for me first.

The one I use most is Price Check. Knowing what a thing sold for, rather than what someone is hoping for, is the difference between a good buy and a shelf ornament.

Where your data lives

This matters to me, so I will be direct about it. Prowl has no accounts, no logins and no database of users. There is nothing for me to sell and nothing for anyone to breach, because your search list is stored in your own browser on your own device.

The trade-off is honest: if you clear your browser data, your list goes with it. That is what the backup code is for. Tap Copy Backup Code, paste the string somewhere safe, and you can restore it later or move it to a new phone.

Two things to set up on your phone. First, allow pop-ups for the site — Prowl works by opening tabs, and a blocker will stop it dead. Second, add it to your home screen. It behaves like an app from there, which is how I use it: open it, thumb a term, walk the aisle.

Getting the most out of it

Add your real BOLO terms first. The ones you already check. Prowl is only as good as your list.
Star the daily ones. Then Daily Prowl becomes a single tap at the start of a hunt.
Trim the marketplaces you do not use. Nineteen tabs is a lot. Turning off five you never buy from makes the rest faster.
Set your Craigslist and Facebook cities before you go out, so local results are actually local.
Use Price Check before you buy, not after. It takes four seconds and it is the whole point.
Copy your backup code now, while you are thinking about it, rather than after you have lost the list.

What it does not do

Worth saying plainly, because I would rather you know going in.

Prowl does not scrape anything or hold a database of listings. It builds the correct search URL for each marketplace and opens it. That means you always see live results straight from the source — but it also means it cannot do things a scraper could, like alert you overnight or track a price over time.

It also cannot log in for you. A few sites want an account before they show much, and Prowl gets you to the search page, not past the door.

And it is not an appraisal tool. It puts the sold comps in front of you. Reading them is still your job — which is most of what the rest of these guides are about.

It is free, and it stays free

There is no paid tier, no trial, and nothing gated. If it saves you time and you feel like putting something in the tip jar, there is a Ko-fi link inside the app, and that is genuinely optional.

If you find a bug, or a marketplace you want added, tell me. Most of what is in there now came from someone asking.

Open Prowl

Free, no account, works on your phone. Add it to your home screen and take it hunting.

Start prowling — free

Made by Matt at Owl & Twig Vintage.
We buy and sell this stuff ourselves in Michigan — everything here comes from handling pieces, getting it wrong a few times, and reading the sold comps. Spotted something we missed? Tell us and we will fix it.