About Booty Bay Broker

The story behind the World of Warcraft Auction House price tracker -- who built it, why it exists, and how to get in touch.

Established: Last Updated:

About Booty Bay Broker

Booty Bay Broker is a free, community-built World of Warcraft Auction House price analytics platform. Named after the iconic goblin-run trade port in Stranglethorn Vale, the site tracks real-time and historical prices for every tradeable item across all North American and European realms -- covering WoW Retail (Midnight), MoP Classic, and TBC Anniversary Classic.

The site was born from a simple frustration: manually checking AH prices across multiple characters and realms is impractical, and without historical context, it is impossible to know whether a price is fair. The site solves that by collecting hourly snapshots from every supported realm, normalizing prices to per-unit values, computing market statistics (median, mean, minimum, maximum, and listing count), and storing up to one full year of history. The result is a searchable, chartable view of the WoW economy available to every player for free.

Data sources and methodology are described in How It Works below.

The entire codebase is open source on GitHub. The service is supported by advertising -- there are no premium tiers, no paywalled data, and no accounts required to browse prices.

For a full walkthrough of features, data methodology, and how to use the site, see the Guide.

How It Works

Every hour, an automated data collection pipeline runs across all supported realms in both the US and EU regions. Each collection cycle captures a complete snapshot of every active auction listing -- tens of thousands of items per realm, millions of data points per day across all realms combined.

Data Sources

WoW Retail data comes directly from the official Blizzard Battle.net Game Data API. This is the same first-party data that powers the in-game Auction House. Retail data includes both realm-specific auctions and region-wide commodity listings.

WoW Classic data (MoP Classic and TBC Anniversary) comes from the TradeSkillMaster (TSM) API, the most widely used economy addon in the WoW Classic community. Classic realms include faction-specific Auction Houses (Horde and Alliance), and both are tracked independently.

Data Processing

Raw auction data is processed into per-item statistics for each realm and snapshot: market value, median price, minimum price, maximum price, standard deviation, and total listing count. Buyout prices are normalized to per-unit values so that bulk listings are comparable to single-item listings. These statistics are stored as a time series in a PostgreSQL database backed by TimescaleDB, optimized for fast historical queries across large date ranges.

The processed data powers interactive price history charts, cross-realm price comparisons, activity heatmaps, and a searchable item database. The exact timestamp of the most recent data update is displayed on every Auction House page so you always know how current the prices are.

Price history is retained for up to one full year, allowing you to analyze seasonal trends, patch-day price spikes, and long-term market shifts. For a detailed walkthrough of every feature, see the Guide.

Why Trust This Data

Selling herbs, evaluating transmog, or comparing consumable costs across realms before a raid night -- the numbers need to be reliable. This is how we keep them honest.

First-Party Sources

As described above, Retail prices come from the official Blizzard Game Data API and Classic prices come from TradeSkillMaster.

Hourly Collection, Per-Unit Normalization

Data collection runs every hour, around the clock. Each snapshot captures every active listing on every supported realm. Buyout prices are normalized to per-unit values (total buyout divided by quantity) so that a 200-stack of ore is directly comparable to a single piece. This normalization is applied before any statistics are computed, ensuring that median, mean, and minimum values accurately reflect the cost per individual item.

Open Source and Tested

The full codebase is publicly available on GitHub. Anyone can inspect the data collection logic, the normalization pipeline, the statistical calculations, and the API endpoints. The project maintains thousands of automated tests covering data processing, API correctness, edge cases, and regression prevention. Every code change is tested before deployment.

Transparent Limitations

No data source is perfect. Hourly snapshots may miss very short-lived listings. Classic data depends on TSM scanning coverage, which can vary by realm population. Commodity prices (region-wide trade goods in Retail) fluctuate quickly and the hourly snapshot represents a point-in-time view, not a continuous feed.

The Creator

TheMizeGuy

Founder, Lead Developer, and Sole Maintainer

A full-stack software engineer and longtime World of Warcraft player who has been active in the game since the original launch in 2004. What began as a personal project to automate Auction House price tracking -- born out of frustration with having to manually check prices across multiple characters and realms -- has grown into a price tracker that monitors hundreds of realm economies across multiple WoW game versions, processing millions of price data points daily.

The idea for the site came from a simple problem every WoW gold-maker faces: you want to know if a price is good before you buy, but checking the AH on every character, on every realm, at different times of day, is impractical. Spreadsheets helped for a while, but they could not keep up with the volume of data. The solution was to build an automated system that collects and analyzes pricing data around the clock -- and then make it available to every player who faces the same challenge.

Crafters need per-unit normalized prices; transmog sellers need historical volume data; guild leaders need to compare consumable prices across weekly reset cycles -- every feature exists because a real trading workflow demanded it. The codebase has thousands of automated tests and is actively maintained with regular updates driven by community feedback.

Contact

We welcome questions, feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions. Here are the best ways to reach us:

  • Bug Reports and Feature Requests -- Send bug reports, feature requests, and technical questions to our support email. Every report is reviewed and addressed by the maintainer.
  • Email -- [email protected] -- For general inquiries, partnership questions, data-related requests, or privacy and security concerns. We aim to respond to all emails within 48 hours.
  • X (formerly Twitter) -- @realmizeguy -- For quick questions, service status updates, or casual feedback.

Attribution and Disclaimers

Retail Auction House data is provided by the Blizzard Battle.net Game Data API. Classic data is provided by the TradeSkillMaster (TSM) API.

World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Booty Bay Broker is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment. All game-related imagery, item names, and in-game terminology are the property of their respective owners and are used here under fair use for the purpose of community price analysis.

TradeSkillMaster is a product of TSM. Classic pricing data is sourced through their API under their terms of service.