Quickstart: your first Radar

Creating your first Radar takes about two minutes. You will name it, describe what you want in plain English, confirm the searches BigFlippa derives from that description, set where to look, and pick how you want to be told. It starts scanning the moment you save.

Before you start

You need an account with an active subscription — Radars do not scan without one. New customers get a 7-day free trial, with a card collected up front. See plans and limits for how the trial and billing work, or the pricing page for what each plan includes.

Step 1: Name your Radar

Open Add radar from your dashboard. The first step asks for a name, up to 99 characters.

This is only for you — it is the label you will see in your dashboard and at the top of every alert, so make it something you will recognise at a glance when you have several running. Something like Tacomas under 200k near Austin beats Radar 1.

Step 2: Write your prompt

This is the step that matters. Describe what you are looking for the way you would explain it to a friend who is helping you shop:

Show me Toyota Tacomas under 200k miles between $4,000 and $20,000. Manual transmission preferred.

Your prompt must be between 10 and 500 characters. Include the item, your price range, and anything that would make you walk away. Your prompt does double duty — it is used to generate the marketplace searches and it is the exact criteria the AI scores every listing against — so it is worth getting right. Writing a good prompt covers this in depth.

Step 3: Review the searches

BigFlippa reads your prompt and proposes the specific marketplace searches that will surface what you described. You get to see them before anything is saved.

On this step you can:

• Edit a search inline to tighten or broaden the wording.
• Remove one that misses the point, using the ✕.
• Add your own free-text search that the AI did not think of.

Duplicates are dropped automatically, and the number of searches a Radar can watch depends on your plan. Do not skip past this step — it is the cheapest place to catch a misunderstanding, because you can see exactly what BigFlippa is about to go looking for.

Step 4: Claim your territory

Next you set where the Radar searches. You can search for a city or address, use your current location, or just drag the map until the pin is where you want it. Then set a radius around that pin.

Pick the point you would actually drive from, not the geographic centre of your metro area. BigFlippa also derives your local timezone from this pin, which determines when the Radar scans — see territory and radius.

Step 5: Choose your notifications

Finally, pick how BigFlippa should reach you:

• Email — sent to your account email address.
• SMS — if you have not added a phone number yet, you will be asked for one here. The number is saved to your account, so every Radar can use it.

You can enable both, or neither. A Radar with no channels enabled still collects Pings in your dashboard; it just will not interrupt you. You can change this at any time, and fine-tune how selective the alerts are, on the notifications page.

Save, and the Radar starts scanning.

What happens next

Matching listings start landing in your dashboard as Pings, and the ones that clear your notification level are sent to you. Give it a day before you judge the results.

If nothing arrives, the usual cause is a prompt that is too narrow, a territory that is too tight, or a notification level set to Best only. If too much arrives, the fix is the same three dials in the other direction.

Related: Creating a Radar · Writing a good prompt · Notifications