Free options

What free Marketplace alerts actually get you

There are real free options here, including ones that have nothing to do with FlipDar. This page lists them all and is specific about where each one stops, because the honest answer is that free covers a lot of people and does not cover everyone.

The short version: free is fine for slow categories and for finding out whether your area has deals worth chasing. It is not enough for consoles or graphics cards, where the listings are gone before a daily scan runs.

Start on the free plan Free tools, no account

No card at signup. The free plan does not expire.

Every free route, ranked by how useful it is

Including the ones that do not involve signing up for anything. If one of the first three solves your problem, you do not need a product.

Facebook's own saved searches

Costs nothing and requires no third-party anything. Save a search in Marketplace and Facebook will sometimes notify you about new matches. Good for a casual purchase. The limits are that you cannot set the frequency, cannot exclude words, and cannot find out whether a check happened — which is why it is unreliable for sourcing specifically.

Facebook notification settings

Worth ten minutes of your time regardless of what else you use. Marketplace notifications are frequently muted at the OS level or turned off in Facebook's own settings without the person realising. If your alerts stopped, check there first before assuming a tool is broken.

Checking manually, but properly

Sorting by newest and searching the misspellings is genuinely effective, and it is free. It is also the thing that does not scale — the reason alert tools exist is that nobody sustains it for more than a fortnight.

FlipDar's free plan

One watchlist, scanned every 24 hours, no card and no expiry. Adds the two things Facebook does not do: exclusion words that run before delivery, and a known scan schedule so 'nothing found' means something.

The free calculators and builders

No account at all. The watchlist builder produces keywords and exclusion lists you can paste into any tool, including Facebook's own search box, and the calculators work out the price ceiling that makes a listing worth driving to.

Referral time

FlipDar's referral programme grants paid-tier time for inviting other people, which is a legitimate route to faster scans without paying. It is a real mechanism, not a discount code — the terms are on the referrals page once you have an account.

Where free stops being enough

Three specific situations. If none of these describe you, the free plan is probably the right permanent answer.

Your category moves in under an hour. Consoles, graphics cards and tool lots are typically gone the same evening. A 24-hour scan will show you things that already sold, which is worse than useless because it feels like the tool is working.

You are watching more than one thing. One watchlist covers one category properly. The moment you want tools and consoles, you need a second, because sharing a price band and exclusion list across two categories makes both worse.

You are doing this for money rather than curiosity. At that point the cadence pays for itself on a single flip, and the calculation stops being about the subscription.

If none of those apply, stay free. FlipDar prices per account rather than per watchlist specifically so that upgrading later is a small decision rather than a multiplying one — the full pricing is here.

Questions people ask

Are there genuinely free Facebook Marketplace alerts?

Yes, in two forms. Facebook's own saved searches and notifications cost nothing, and FlipDar's Free plan gives you one watchlist scanned every 24 hours with no card and no expiry. Both are real. What neither gives you for free is a fast cadence, which is the thing that costs money to run.

Does FlipDar's free plan expire?

No. It is a plan, not a trial. There is no countdown, no card required at signup, and no point at which the watchlist stops running. Some products in this category advertise a free tier that is a time-limited trial with a payment method up front — that is a different thing and worth checking before you sign up anywhere.

What is missing from the free plan?

Speed and volume, mostly. Free is one watchlist on a 24-hour scan. Pro at $8/month is 5 watchlists on 5-minute scans, and Enterprise at $30/month adds a larger alert budget. Both paid plans also keep searching watchlists you have paused — every 4 hours on Pro, every 30 minutes on Enterprise — which Free does not do at all. The filtering, the alert feed, the AI assistant, and the profit dashboard's core view are all included at $0.

Why is a 24-hour scan useful at all?

Because plenty of categories move slowly. Furniture, appliances and anything bulky routinely sits for days, because most buyers cannot transport it. A daily scan reliably finds those. It is genuinely not enough for consoles or graphics cards, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.

Do the free tools require an account?

No. The watchlist builder, the profit calculator, the maximum buy price calculator, the negative keyword generator and the pickup cost calculator all work with no signup, no email, and nothing saved. They are useful whether or not you ever use FlipDar itself.

Start free, stay free if it fits

One watchlist, scanned every 24 hours, no card, no expiry. If your category turns out to need speed, the faster tiers are a few dollars a month — and if it does not, nothing needs to change.

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FlipDar is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Meta, Facebook, or eBay. Trademarks belong to their owners. Informational only, not financial advice; resale outcomes vary by category, condition, geography, fees, and timing.