I Automated Finding Products That Sell for 3x More in Southeast Asia (Open Source)

The Problem

A phone case costs $2 on Taobao (China). The same product sells for $7 on Shopee Vietnam. That's a 3.5x price gap.

This information asymmetry exists across thousands of products, but manually checking prices across platforms in different languages is painfully slow.

What I Built

An open-source Python tool that automatically scans 26 product categories across 9 trade routes and finds items with 3x+ margins.

Trade Routes

• China → Vietnam / Thailand / Indonesia
• Japan → Vietnam / Thailand / Indonesia
• Korea → Vietnam / Thailand / Indonesia

How It Works

# FastAPI endpoint
@app.get("/api/search")
async def search(q: str, route: str = "CN-VN"):
    # Scans source marketplace (1688, Taobao)
    # Compares with target marketplace (Shopee, Lazada)
    # Returns items with margin > 2x
    return find_opportunities(q, route)

Real Data (March 2026)

Product	Buy Price	Sell Price	Margin
Programming Robot Kit	¥89	₫1,100,000	3.5x
Pet GPS Tracker	¥65	฿790	3.4x
Foldable Keyboard	¥78	Rp385,000	3.3x
Nail Art Kit	¥5	₫55,000	3.1x
Ice Sleeve UPF50+	¥8	₫45,000	2.8x

Tech Stack

• Python + FastAPI for the API
• Claude AI for cross-language product matching
• pm2 for 24/7 operation
• Telegram Bot for instant alerts

Try It

🤖 Telegram Bot: t.me/victorjiabot - message any product keyword

⭐ GitHub: github.com/victorjzq/global-arbitrage-api

What I Learned

1. Price gaps are everywhere - information asymmetry between markets is massive
2. Language barriers create moats - few tools bridge CN/JP/KR with SEA markets
3. Automation beats manual research - scanning 26 categories every 6 hours finds opportunities humans miss

Would love to hear if anyone else is working on cross-border arbitrage tools. What markets are you looking at?

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Built with Python, FastAPI, and Claude AI. Open source and free to use.