Competition & Buy Box: the MCP tools

The MCP tools for competition and Buy Box — offers on an item, catalog-wide Buy Box ownership, and the credit-based per-US-state Buy Box scan — with the permission each needs and example prompts.

Published 7/12/2026Updated 7/12/2026

MCP · Reference

Once you've connected an AI assistant to Flashpricer, it can pull your competition and Buy Box data in plain language — the offers on an item, your Buy Box ownership across the catalog, and even the Buy Box winner in each US state. Here are the four Competition & Buy Box tools.

4 tools 3 read 1 credit-based

Not connected yet? Start with Connect an AI assistant to Flashpricer (MCP). See also Products & items: the read tools.

Scoped to you. All four tools use the Products · view permission and only ever see your organization's data. Three are free to run; the per-state Buy Box scan spends credits (flagged below).

Competition on your items

item-competitionReadproducts · view

Returns all competing offers for one item, sorted by total price.

Options: status (published / unpublished / all) · fulfillment (merchant / channel / all). Works for repricing-enabled items in your organization.

Ask"Show me every offer competing on this item, FBA only."

search-items-competitionReadproducts · view

Competition data for a whole set of items at once. Pass a searchId from search-items, or the same search parameters directly.

Tip: aggregate: true returns only the stats (Buy Box ownership rate, average number of offers…) without per-item detail — faster and cheaper on tokens. Also: status · fulfillment · limit (max 200).

Ask"What's my Buy Box ownership rate across items with competition?"

Buy Box by US state

The per-state scan spends credits. buybox-by-state scrapes the live Amazon Buy Box winner for each US state — 1 credit per state, and it scans all 51 states (50 + DC) by default. It only works on Amazon US items. Your assistant always shows the estimated cost and current balance and asks you to confirm before spending anything; you can also limit it to specific states.

buybox-by-stateCreditsConfirmsproducts · view

Starts a scan of the live Amazon Buy Box winner (seller + price) in each US state — the regional Buy Box distribution.

Cost: 1 credit per state, billed only when a state fetch succeeds. Scope: all 51 US states by default, or pass specific states (e.g. CA, NY). Amazon US items only. Returns: a fetchId to track with the status tool. Scans run live and take ~20–60s (sometimes a couple of minutes).

Ask"Scan the Buy Box by state for this ASIN in CA, NY and TX."

buybox-by-state-statusReadproducts · view

Polls the progress and results of a scan — states done, credits charged, the per-state Buy Box offers, and a winners summary.

Needs: the fetchId from buybox-by-state. Free to poll. Early "pending / running" with 0 states done is normal — it just keeps updating until complete.

Ask"How's the per-state Buy Box scan going?"

Tips for better answers

Just describe it. You never need tool names — say "who's winning the Buy Box on this item in California?" and the assistant runs the right scan.
Reuse a search. Ask "what's my Buy Box ownership across my FBA items?" and the assistant searches and pulls competition in one step (reusing the searchId).
Ask for totals, not lists. For catalog-wide questions the assistant uses aggregate mode — a quick summary instead of thousands of offer rows.
Mind the credits. The per-state scan is the only credit-based tool here; the assistant always previews the cost and waits for your go-ahead.

Ready to check the competition?

Open your connected assistant and ask "What's my Buy Box ownership rate across items with competition?" Questions about the MCP tools? Reach us at success@flashpricer.com.

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