Takealot's own app listings name wish lists, daily deals and a barcode scanner for price checks, but no price history. Outside sites fill that gap: one says it keeps "a daily history of the Takealot prices". Takealot's terms forbid robots that monitor or copy its platform, with one exception for search engines. When our server in the United States asked takealot.com for pages, Cloudflare answered with a challenge.
What Takealot itself offers
The Takealot app is published by Takealot Online (Pty) Ltd. On 3 October 2026, its App Store listing showed about 726,000 ratings, and Google Play showed more than 10 million downloads. The Google Play listing promises wish lists that you can share "across all platforms", "Daily Deals, App Only Deals & special promotions", and a barcode scanner that "lets you price check items you see in stores". They name no price history.
A wish list does not hold a price. Takealot's terms say that adding items to your wish list or cart "does not guarantee that you can purchase those items later at the same price". Prices also move because Takealot is a marketplace. The terms note that when more than one seller offers the same product, "they may charge different prices, or one may offer a discount while the other does not".
Can a wish list tell you about a lower price? In November 2019, Takealot's account on X told a customer: "Please add the item to your wishlist so that you can be notified once the seller decreases the price." That is Takealot's own word, but it is nearly seven years old. Takealot's help centre showed our server a challenge, so we could not confirm how this works today.
The outside price trackers
Google's suggestions in South Africa include "takealot price history checker" and "takealot price tracker extension". The trackers we read say what they do:
| tracker | what it says it does |
|---|---|
| a price history site | Keeps "a daily history of the Takealot prices". You paste a product link, an app share link or a title. |
| a price alert extension | Tracks prices, sends a notice when a price drops, and shows price trends. It says it tracks only what you ask it to. |
| two more browser extensions | Add a price history button to Takealot pages, with charts from that price history site. |
One of the extensions says it is "Not directly affiliated with Takealot". None of the pages we read says how the daily prices are collected.
What Takealot's terms say
Takealot's terms are on its policy site. They print no date, but the page's own data says it was published on 18 November 2025 and last changed on 22 May 2026. They set these rules for using the platform:
| rule | what the terms say |
|---|---|
| robots | You will not use any robot, spider, other automatic device or manual process to monitor, copy, distribute or modify the platform or its content. |
| the exception | Technology used by internet search websites to direct internet users to Takealot. |
| content | The content is the property of Takealot, its advertisers, sponsors, or is licensed to Takealot, and you may not use, distribute or reproduce it without the property owner's written consent. |
| accounts | Takealot may suspend or terminate your account at any time and for any reason. |
Whether a tracker has an arrangement with Takealot, we do not know.
The official route for sellers
Takealot offers a Seller API to the sellers on its marketplace. Its documentation says it lets you "manage your offers in an automated and scalable way". It covers a seller's own offers, in single changes or in batches, plus stock counts, stock health, sales and orders. Its documented fields cover a seller's own offers, prices, stock and sales, and none of them is another seller's price.
What takealot.com did when our server asked
We asked takealot.com for its home page, its help centre and its robots.txt file from our server in St. Louis on 3 October 2026. The home page and the help centre answered HTTP 403, with Cloudflare's challenge page. The robots.txt file answered normally, and the terms answered from the separate policy site.
Our server sits in a data center in the United States. We did not test from an address in South Africa or from a home connection. The test therefore cannot say whether the challenge was about the country, the data center or the plain request.
The robots.txt file allows most of the site to every crawler. For every crawler it does not name, it closes accounts, the cart, wish lists and two help addresses, /help/page/ and /help/faq/, but not the help centre. It also closes addresses that sort or filter results by price, rating or availability.
Where a proxy fits
For tracking the price of something you want, a proxy does not fit. Wish lists and the outside trackers work from your own account and browser. Collecting Takealot's pages with a robot does not fit either, because the terms forbid robots that monitor the platform. A seller who needs its own data has the Seller API.
For other work where a proxy is allowed, our South Africa page lets you target South Africa down to the city, and what a residential proxy is explains the type. Residential traffic without city targeting starts at $0.44/GB, and every plan is on our pricing page.
The limits of this page
We did not open Takealot's website or app in a browser, so its features are described from its app listings, its terms and its account on X. The wish list notice rests on a reply from 2019. We read the outside trackers' own pages and did not install any extension. We sent plain requests from one server, without a browser. This page is due for a check by 3 January 2027.
Sources
Every page below was read on 3 October 2026.
- Takealot, Terms of our Platform, on the Takealot Policy Centre.
- Takealot, the robots.txt file of takealot.com.
- Apple App Store, Takealot - Mobile Shopping App, and Google Play, Takealot - Online Shopping App.
- Takealot on X, a reply to a customer, 27 November 2019.
- Takealot, Seller API documentation.
- Our requests to takealot.com from our server in St. Louis, 3 October 2026.
- Google autocomplete, South African suggestions for Takealot price phrases.
