The WoW Forever Auction House: How Prices Work on the Beta

The short answer

WoW Forever has no Blizzard auction API, so the beta Auction House is invisible to every price site that depends on one. Every beta price on this site comes from player scans: a player runs our addon at an auctioneer, and we file the snapshot. On 2026-10-08 our tables held one beta realm, Classic Beta PvE 2, with two houses, 3,370 different items and a little over 700,000 units listed between them. The newest scans were taken at 22:08 and 22:09 UTC.

The most useful thing those scans show is not any single price. It is the gap between the Auction House and the vendor. Of the 3,370 items we saw, only 6 were listed below what a vendor pays for them, but several vendor trade goods were listed far above what a vendor charges. Simple Wood was on the Auction House at 58 copper while its client buy price is 38 copper. Never buy a vendor good on the Auction House without checking.

How a beta price reaches this page

It is worth knowing exactly where a number comes from before you trust it.

1. A player scans. Someone on the beta opens the auction house with our addon running and lets it read the listings.
2. We file it. The scan is ingested into the same tables our Classic Era and Mists prices use, under the version "forever". Each scan becomes a snapshot per item: the lowest buyout, the total quantity listed and the number of listings.
3. We keep the history. Every ingest also writes an hourly history row, which is the only record of what a beta price used to be.
4. The page asks for the lowest price. Price strips on these guides show the lowest scanned buyout across both beta houses, how many houses listed the item, and when.

Scans arrive when players run them, not on a clock. Our run log for the last few days shows scans at uneven times: two on the evening of 2026-10-08, one just after midnight UTC that day, three on 2026-10-07 and two on 2026-10-06. The biggest single scan wrote 11,990 rows; a typical one writes three to six thousand. A price can therefore be a few hours old or a day old. Every strip prints its scan time; read it.

The two beta houses

Our filed scans split cleanly into two auction houses on the one realm, house ids 2 and 6. In Blizzard's Classic auction data, 2 is the Alliance house, 6 the Horde house and 7 the neutral goblin house. We have no rows for a neutral house on the beta, so either nobody has scanned one or it does not exist there yet.

Two thirds of the items appear in both houses, which means the remaining third is a chance. If an item is only listed on one side, the other side has no competition at all. That matters more on a beta than at launch, because a beta realm has fewer sellers.

Live prices of common goods

These are the materials every new character touches. The strip at the top of the page updates with each scan; the table below adds the client vendor values so you can see the floor under each price.

Every one of these was listed above its vendor value on 2026-10-08. That is the normal state of a healthy market: the vendor price is the floor, and anything above it is demand. When you see a common material close to its vendor price, the market is flooded and it is time to hold rather than list.

Vendor goods: where the Auction House beats the vendor, and where it does not

This is the comparison that saves the most gold. Many crafting reagents are sold by trade supply vendors in Classic, and the client gives each one a buy price. Here is how the beta Auction House compared on 2026-10-08.

The top half is a trap for new crafters: those goods were listed for more than a vendor sells them for, sometimes double. The bottom half is the reverse. Crystal Vial was listed far below its client buy price, so an alchemist buying vials should buy them from players. These gaps shift with every scan, so treat the table as the habit, not the answer: compare before every purchase.

Cuts, deposits and faction houses

The rules for what the Auction House takes are not in the game files. In Classic Era, the faction houses take a cut of the final sale and charge a deposit up front that scales with the item's vendor value and the listing length; the neutral goblin houses take a larger cut and let both factions trade. If Forever keeps those rules, three things follow.

1. Price small items above the deposit. A deposit you lose on an unsold stack of cheap herbs can eat the whole profit.
2. Use the faction house for your own side's buyers. It is cheaper to sell there than through a neutral house.
3. Check the other faction's prices before crossing. Our strips show "houses listing". If only one house has an item, the other side may pay more.

We will replace this section with the exact beta numbers once a tester confirms the cut and deposit from the in game window.

A selling routine that works on the beta

The beta market rewards the same habits launch will, only faster. This is the routine we would follow on any character with something to sell.

1. Check the strip before you list. Look at the lowest buyout and the scan time on the guide for your material. If the scan is fresh, list just under it. If it is old, check the auction house yourself first.
2. Look at "houses listing". If only one house lists your item, you are the market on the other side. Price for that.
3. List in the sizes crafters use. Recipes ask for one to twelve of a material. Stacks of five, ten or twenty sell faster than one stack of two hundred.
4. Undercut by a little, not a lot. On a thin beta market, a deep undercut just resets the price lower for everyone, including you next time.
5. Pull what does not sell. If a material sits for a whole day, the market is full. Hold it for launch week, when demand from new crafters arrives all at once.
6. Vendor only the six. Of 3,370 items in our scans, only six were listed under their vendor value. Everything else is worth more to a player than to a merchant.

Helping the price data

If you are in the beta, every scan you run makes every price on this site fresher for everyone. The more often the two houses are scanned, the shorter the gap between a listing going up and the strip showing it. A scan from each faction every few hours would turn these beta prices from snapshots into a real market history. When launch arrives on 2026-11-04, the same addon and the same tables carry on, so the habit you build on the beta pays off on day one.

Reading a beta price honestly

A beta price is a real price paid by real players, but on an unusual market. Keep four things in mind.

• Supply is thin. A level cap of 20, rising to 30, means almost nobody gathers mid level materials yet. Anything above that range is priced by a handful of listings.
• Gold is cheap. Testers know the gold disappears at launch, so they spend freely. Rare items such as pets and plans sell for many times what they would at launch.
• One scan is one moment. Read the scan time on the strip. A price from twenty hours ago on a quiet realm may already be gone.
• The ratios last longer than the numbers. Copper Ore against Copper Bar, Light Leather against Pristine Leather: those relationships tend to survive into launch even when every number falls.

That last point is why we keep publishing beta prices at all. The beta shows you which items have more buyers than sellers. On launch day that knowledge is worth more than any single price.

Changelog

• 2026-10-08: First version. Scan facts from our player scan tables and run log for Classic Beta PvE 2. Vendor values from the beta client, build 70291. Auction House rules described from Classic Era behaviour and labelled.
• 2026-10-08: Review pass: house counts, unit totals, the six below vendor items and every trade good row re-checked against the 2026-10-08 scans.