FirstSnag watches your Facebook Marketplace searches from your own PC. When something new is listed, you hear about it within minutes, with a straight answer on whether the price is actually good.
Free during the beta, no card Your password goes to Facebook, never to us Your data stays on your PC
Price drop: $340 → $275 · PS5 Digital Edition
19% cheaper · Seattle, WA
Great deal: $8,550 · 2015 Honda Civic LX
29% under similar cars · 88k mi · Bellevue, WA
The real app, running on demo listings (drawings stand in for the photos). Your dashboard lives at 127.0.0.1, which means on your own computer.
How it works
No account to make with us, no extension to trust with your browsing. Just a small app on your PC.
A small Windows app. It brings everything it needs and drives Chrome or Edge, which you already have.
A small Windows app that drives Chrome or Edge, which you already have. During the beta we send it by email and help you set it up.
FirstSnag opens its own browser window. You log in to Facebook there, the normal way. Your password goes to Facebook, not to us.
Type what you'd search on Marketplace, like "PS5" or "Yamaha R6". Add a max price or words to skip if you want. It starts watching right away.
Features
Every alert comes with the context you'd normally dig for yourself: is it actually cheap, did the price just drop, and is something off.
It learns what things really go for near you: the middle price of what your search has seen in the last 60 days, minus "for parts", "wanted" and silly prices. Every listing gets a label, and you can see the listings behind it.
On Pro, with up to 5 searches, each one is checked about every 5 minutes, so on average you hear about a new listing 2 to 3 minutes after it shows up. You get a notification and a chime, or a Windows notification when the dashboard is closed.
Good deal: $340 · PS5 Slim Digital + 2 controllers
15% under the typical $400 · Bothell, WA
Under your target: $275 · PS5 Digital Edition
Every listing you've seen is tracked, even the ones you scrolled past. When a seller cuts the price, you get an alert with the old and the new price, and the full price history is one click away.
"Deployed, must sell." "Rebuilt title." "Deposit to hold." Warning words hold the score down and show up on the card. A price that's too good to be true gets a warning, not a party.
One click to eBay sold prices or a free NICB VINCheck, plus questions to ask the seller, ready to copy. It never messages anyone for you.
Year and mileage come straight from the listing. A vehicle is compared with similar ones within two model years, adjusted for miles, so a tired high-mileage car doesn't pass for a steal.
Alert apps that fail quietly are the worst. If one search stops getting results, you get one alert and a way to fix it.
Your searches, listings and Facebook login live in a folder on your PC. We never receive them.
Before you install
FirstSnag isn't a cloud service with a fleet of servers. It's an app on your computer that does what you'd do yourself, just more patiently.
No cloud scrapers, no proxies, no fake accounts. Checks come from your computer, through your own signed-in browser window. That's also why your PC has to be on and awake for alerts.
One page at a time, 20 to 40 seconds apart, never more than 60 pages an hour. Like a person refreshing the page, not a bot hammering it. The more searches you add, the more they share those checks.
If Facebook asks you to sign in again, shows a security check or slows things down, FirstSnag stops and tells you. It never tries to get around it. You handle it, then hit resume.
Facebook's terms don't allow automated tools. We made FirstSnag as gentle as we can, but Facebook could still restrict or lock your account. Keep your searches few, and use it knowing that.
I started building FirstSnag while hunting for a Yamaha R6 on Facebook Marketplace. Good ones at a fair price go fast, and refreshing a search all day isn't a plan. The alert apps I looked at run in the cloud, and most don't say how they decide what's a deal.
So I built the one I wanted. It runs on my own PC, checks politely, and shows its math, down to the listings behind every score. The motorcycle comparisons and red-flag checks are in there because I needed them for my own search.
Compare
Cloud alert apps pay for servers and proxies, and charge for it. They also keep working while your computer is off, which we can't do.
Swipe the table sideways to see every app.
| Feature | FirstSnagPro | SwoopaGo plan · source | DealScoutPaid plans · source | SpottablePaid plans · source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $10 a month, or $79 a year | $47 a month ($28 a month on a 12-month plan) | $39.99 to $99.99 in-app (period not stated) | $4.99 to $28.99 a month |
| Searches | Up to 25 | 7 | 3 to 10 | Not listed |
| How often it checks | About every 5 min (up to 5 searches)More searches share 60 checks an hour | Not stated (Basic, Fast and Instant tiers) | Within 5 min (within 1 h on free) | Not stated |
| Price-drop alerts | Yes | Only on the $352/mo plan | Not listed | Not listed |
| How it judges a deal | Typical local price, with the comps shown | AI, method not described on their site | No deal score listed | AI score 1 to 10, method not described on their site |
| Car prices by year and mileage | Yes, plus free NHTSA recalls | AI estimate, method not described on their site | Not listed | Not listed |
| Works with your PC off | No, it runs on your PC | Yes (cloud) | Yes (cloud) | Yes, on paid plans |
| Phone app | No, Windows only | iPhone and Android | iPhone | iPhone, plus a Chrome extension |
From each company's own pricing page or App Store listing (linked above), checked Oct 17, 2026. "Not listed" means we couldn't find it there. Prices change; if something here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
Pricing
Every plan gets every feature. Pro watches more searches, and checks up to 5 of them three times as often.
We're in beta, so there's nothing to pay and no plan limits yet. These are the plans we'll launch with.
To try it on the one thing you want most.
No card needed
Get the free betaFor hunting seriously, or flipping.
Cancel anytime
Join the free betaSame Pro, a lot cheaper per month.
$6.58 a month, billed once a year
Join the free betaNo. Facebook's terms don't allow automated tools to collect data from their site. FirstSnag is built to be gentle: it only runs your own searches, checks slowly like a person refreshing the page, and stops the moment Facebook pushes back.
Even so, Facebook could restrict or lock your account. Using it is your call. We're not affiliated with Meta in any way.
No. You sign in to Facebook yourself, in the app's own browser window, and your password goes straight to Facebook. Your login stays in a folder on your PC. We never receive it, and the app never opens your messages.
Yes. The checks run on your computer, so a sleeping PC means no alerts. Set Windows to never sleep while it's plugged in. The screen can still turn off; only sleep stops it.
On Pro with up to 5 searches, each one is checked about every 5 minutes, with a little randomness. On average that's 2 to 3 minutes from when a listing shows up in Facebook's search to your alert.
The app never loads more than 60 pages an hour, so more searches share those checks: with 10 searches each one is checked about every 10 minutes, and with 25 about every 25 minutes. On Free, your one search is checked about every 15 minutes. If speed matters most, run a few specific searches instead of many broad ones.
Each search learns a typical price: the middle price of what it has seen in the last 60 days, leaving out "wanted", "for parts" and rental posts plus crazy prices. Good is 10 to 25% under that, Great is 25 to 40% under, Steal is 40% or more. It needs about 8 prices before it judges anything, so a brand-new search shows "Learning" for a while.
Anything under 15% of typical gets a scam warning instead. Deal scores are a guide, not a promise: always see the item before you pay.
Yes, that's where it shines. It reads the year and mileage, compares each vehicle with similar ones, flags title and mechanical red flags, and looks up recalls and complaints from NHTSA when you open one. Recall data covers vehicles sold in the US.
Never. It gives you good questions to copy and paste into Messenger, but every message is yours to send.
Not right now. FirstSnag runs on Windows 10 and 11, and alerts show up on that PC. If phone alerts matter to you, tell us; it helps us decide what to build next.
The whole app, free, with no plan limits and no card. All we ask is feedback: what works, what breaks, what you wish it did. When paid plans open, you pick Free or Pro yourself; nothing gets charged, because we never had your card.
Cancel anytime from the link in your receipt email, and Pro keeps working until the end of the time you paid for. If it isn't for you, email us within 14 days of your first payment for a full refund. Details are in the refund policy.
Let FirstSnag do it, politely, every few minutes. Free to start, and it takes five minutes to set up.
