A quick tour of every tab and what it does.
The 60-second version
FangTrack scrapes 28 invertebrate vendors, pulls every live listing, and compares each one against
the whole market and its own price history. It then tags each listing with a deal rating so you
can see, at a glance, what's genuinely a good value versus what's overpriced. Add species you want to a
Watchlist and FangTrack tells you the moment one shows up at your target price.
The data refreshes automatically on a schedule — you don't run anything. Just open Deals to see the latest, or add species to your Watchlist to be alerted.
What the badges mean
| 🔥 |
Fire deal — the lowest delivered price (item + shipping) ever seen for that species, sex and size class, and only when at least two vendors compete on it. The rarest, strongest signal. |
| 💎💎 |
Exceptional — 20%+ below the market median for a like-for-like comparison (same species, sex, size). |
| 💎 |
Strong — 10–20% below market median. |
| 👍 |
Fair — within ~10% of market. Also where listings land when size is unknown (we can't confirm a real discount, so we don't overclaim one). |
| 👎 |
Above market — priced meaningfully higher than comparable listings. |
Ratings are always like-for-like: a listing is only compared with the same species, the same sex group
(female / male / mature male / unsexed are kept separate), and the same size class. Captive-bred,
wild-caught, and unstated-source listings all compete together — most vendors never state a source,
so excluding them would knock the majority of honest listings out of contention. We show the CB / WC / ?
tag on every listing as information, but it carries no weight in the score.
Always confirm the source with the seller and choose captive-bred (CB) whenever possible.
Rarity tiers
A separate signal from deals. Every species is percentile-ranked across the whole tracked catalog by how
few sellers carry it — rarest at the top. The named tier answers "how hard is this to find right now?"
| Mythic |
Grail tier — the rarest ~5% of species. Lucky to see it listed at all. |
| Legendary |
Very hard to find — only a handful of sellers ever carry it. |
| Rare |
A few sellers stock it, and it tends to sell fast. |
| Uncommon |
You'll shop a few sellers to find one. |
| Common |
Widely carried across the market. |
| Ubiquitous |
Everywhere, almost always in stock. |
The dashboard, tile by tile
The tiles across the top are live counts from the most recent crawl of the
vendor websites only — private-seller lists are never counted here.
Every tile is clickable and opens the Deals page pre-filtered to it.
| Total listings |
Every in-stock listing across the sites we crawl. This is the pool everything else is scored against. |
| 🔥 Fire deals |
Listings at the lowest delivered price (item + shipping) ever recorded for that species/sex/size — and only where at least two vendors compete. The strongest signal. |
| 💎💎 Exceptional |
20%+ below the like-for-like market median. |
| 💎 Strong |
10–20% below median. |
| 👍 Fair |
Within ~10% of market — a normal price. Also where a listing lands when its size isn't stated (we won't claim a discount we can't verify). |
| 👎 Above market |
Priced meaningfully higher than comparable listings. |
| ♀ Females |
Listings sold as sexed females — usually the premium a keeper pays to skip the maturity gamble. |
| 🎯 Watchlist |
How many of your tracked species had a hit in the latest crawl. |
The Top Deals list below the tiles is the market's
best offers right now: every 🔥 Fire and 💎💎 Exceptional listing, shown cheapest first.
If it's on that list, it's either an all-time-low delivered price or 20%+ under the median —
never just "inexpensive." As always, confirm the price and source on the vendor's own site
before buying.
The tabs
Dashboard — your at-a-glance snapshot: total listings, and counts of Fire / Exceptional / Strong / Fair / Above-market deals, females, and watchlist targets. Every tile is clickable and filters the Deals page. It also shows Market Movers and your last crawl's watchlist hits.
Deals — the master table of every in-stock listing. Filter by deal grade, sex, vendor, source (CB/WC), rarity, price, and websites-only vs. private sellers. Click any column header to sort ascending/descending.
Watchlist — add species you're hunting (pick from the dropdown, set optional sex / size / max price). FangTrack flags matches after every crawl. Click a watched species to see all its current listings.
Collection — log what you already own, with what you paid; FangTrack shows today's market value and your gain/loss, and marks species you keep with a ✓ elsewhere.
Vendors — see each vendor's last-crawl status, inspect our listings for a vendor next to a link to their live site, and import a private seller's list (paste a Facebook/email price list; add their contact info).
Species — look up any species by scientific or common name; drill into its price history, market stats and current listings across vendors.
Alerts — an inbox of price drops, back-in-stock, all-time-low deals, and saved-search hits from each crawl.
Crawler — a log of every crawl run (vendor, status, listing count, time) and a speed report for the latest crawl.
Digest — a plain-text summary of your watchlist hits and top deals you can generate any time.
Submit — recommend a vendor to add, report a bug, or send an improvement idea.
Settings (⚙) — your ZIP (for shipping estimates), the email for deal alerts, and the "hide private sellers" display preference.
Rarity & source columns
Rarity (x/10) — how uncommon a species (and size class) is across the tracked market. Higher = fewer sellers carry it.
CB / WC — captive-bred vs. wild-caught, inferred from the listing. They're never price-compared to each other.
The trait badges on each spider card
Each species page shows up to six at-a-glance badges — the husbandry and safety facts a
buyer asks first. They're researched per species (genus defaults with species-level
corrections), and always appear in the same order. Hover any badge for the detail.
🌎 New World / 🌍 Old World — the master key. New World spiders have irritating "urticating" hairs but milder venom; Old World have no hairs but potent venom and tend to be faster and more defensive.
⬛ Terrestrial / 🌳 Arboreal / 🕳️ Fossorial — where it lives, which decides the enclosure: floor space, height, or deep substrate to burrow.
🐜 Dwarf / ▪️ Medium / 🦵 Large — adult size class; sets enclosure and feeder size.
🟢 Docile / 🟡 Skittish / 🔴 Defensive — temperament, traffic-light coded. Green tolerates maintenance; red readily throws a threat posture.
✅ Beginner / ⚠️ Intermediate / ⛔ Advanced — an honest suitability rating that rolls up venom, speed, and husbandry fussiness.
🌴 Tropical / 🍃 Temperate / 🏜️ Arid — the climate to keep it in (humidity/temperature target).
These are general guidance from reputable care sheets, not a substitute for researching your
specific animal — always confirm care with the seller and a trusted source before buying.
Scorpions and jumping spiders show a trimmed set suited to them.
How your collection is valued
Tarantula prices swing enormously with sex and size — a confirmed adult
female can be worth 3–6× an unsexed sling of the same species. So FangTrack values every
animal in your collection like-for-like instead of using one blended
average:
- It finds the current in-stock listings of the same species.
- It narrows to ones matching your animal's sex (female / male / unsexed) and then its size class (sling / juvenile / sub-adult / adult).
- Your value is the median of those matching listings. The small grey note under each Market price on your Collection page tells you exactly what it was compared to — e.g. "adult female comps (5)".
- If there aren't at least two matching listings, it widens the comparison (same sex, any size → same size, any sex → the species-wide market median) and labels it "market median" so you know it's an estimate.
Worked example. A Green Bottle Blue: as an unsexed 1" sling it's worth
about $60 (what slings actually list for); as a confirmed adult
female it's valued near $250, because that's the median of the
adult-female GBBs listed right now — not the ~$85 you'd get by averaging every GBB of every
size and sex together.
It's a market estimate from live asking prices, not a formal appraisal or a
guaranteed sale price — the more precisely you record each animal's sex and size, the sharper
the estimate. Purchase prices you enter stay private to you.
FAQ
How often does the data update?
Automatically, on a schedule — you don't run anything. FangTrack crawls every tracked vendor on a timer and refreshes the whole market. A full crawl takes a few minutes because FangTrack waits at least 2 seconds between requests to each vendor — we scrape politely and never hammer a site.
What counts as a listing?
One in-stock variant. A product offered as 1" unsexed, 2" female, and 3" male is three listings, because each has its own price and belongs in a different comparison bucket.
Why is an inexpensive listing only rated 👍 Fair, not a deal?
Because its size wasn't listed. Without a size we can't confirm it's actually a discount versus a like-for-like animal, so we don't overclaim. Ratings you can trust beat ratings that look exciting. This is one reason why you should always examine the vendor site before making a purchase decision.
Why don't I see feeders, enclosures, substrate, or merch?
FangTrack tracks live invertebrates only. Supplies, feeder insects, decor, plants, and apparel are filtered out so the market data stays clean. (A feeders view may come later.)
A vendor I know isn't here. Can I add it?
Yes — use the Submit tab to recommend a vendor. If it runs on a supported platform we can usually add it quickly.
How do private seller lists work?
On the Vendors tab, paste a price list from a Facebook group or email and add the seller's contact info. FangTrack parses it into listings that appear alongside website vendors. Use the Hide private sellers preference in Settings to hide them. Your private seller price sheets are private, not public, so those price lists are not displayed to other users. They are for your information, to vet pricing against the public market.
What is a 🔥 Fire deal exactly?
The lowest delivered cost (price + shipping) ever recorded for that species / sex / size class inside FangTrack, and only when multiple vendors offer it — so it reflects genuine market competition, not a single lonely listing. As the site grows, fire deals will become rare. Closer to site launch, there may be lots of them because the data set is new.
How is the Rarity score and tier calculated?
Two separate numbers. The 1–10 score measures scarcity — mostly how many distinct sellers have ever carried that species in our data, nudged by how many total sightings and how recently. The named tier (Mythic → Ubiquitous) is a percentile rank across the whole catalog: the rarest ~5% of species are Mythic, the next ~10% Legendary, and so on down, with ties broken by fewer sellers then fewer sightings. So the tier always answers one question — "how does this species' availability rank against every other species we track?" — and it self-corrects as more data arrives. It's a young metric: treat it as "seldom seen in the tracked market," not a definitive statement about the whole hobby.
How do you detect a price drop?
We only report a drop when the exact same listing — same species, same product page, same size and sex variant, at the same seller — is cheaper than it was on an earlier day's scan, and only when that listing is unambiguous in both scans. We never pair two different animals, or two different variants of one product, together. So a "price drop" always means one thing: this specific listing, at this vendor, is genuinely cheaper than before. We show the link so you can verify it yourself.
What does "likely recently taken" mean on a species card?
We can only see what vendors ask, never what actually sells. So when a specific listing that was in stock on the previous scan is gone (or marked out of stock) on the latest one, we note it as "likely recently taken at ~$X" — clearly labelled as inferred, not a confirmed sale. It's an honest proxy for what's moving in the market: an asking price disappeared near that number. We never claim more than that.
How do the discount codes on the Deals page work?
Two sources feed them. First, a curated list of codes we know from affiliate/community pages (things like COLLECTIVE10 or TTC10). Second, an automated scan of each vendor's homepage and promo pages that looks for phrases like “use code WORD for 10% off.” For any listing, we take its vendor's active codes, compute the saving on that exact price (respecting any minimum order), pick the single biggest saver, and show the code plus the “with code” price. Percentage and flat-$ codes are both supported.
Are the discount codes guaranteed to work?
No — treat a scraped code as a candidate until it's confirmed. Every code starts unverified; once someone confirms it at a real checkout it's marked verified. Both still show on Deals, but always re-enter the code at checkout to be sure. Codes that carry no real saving are filtered out, so you shouldn't see noise.
How are holiday sales (Black Friday, July 4th) and BOGO offers handled?
The same scan watches for storewide-sale banners — “20% off sitewide,” “Black Friday 25%,” “Memorial Day sale” — and, when a percentage is named, applies it to every one of that vendor's listings automatically (no code needed) for as long as the banner is up. A sale that names no number, or a buy-one-get-one / multi-buy offer, is flagged as a “sale running” note rather than a fake per-item price, because the real BOGO saving depends on your whole cart. These refresh whenever the scan runs alongside the crawl, so a Friday-night sale is in the data by the next crawl and disappears once the banner comes down.
Does FangTrack sell my data or take money to boost rankings?
No. Rankings are computed purely from price data and have no knowledge of any commercial relationship. Private seller lists you import are yours.
Will it email me?
Enter your email in Settings. Email delivery of fire deals and watchlist hits is a planned feature for after we have beta testers; for now the digest is viewable in-app on the Digest tab.