construction material price series

Construction material price series are repeated price observations for a defined material specification, so cost movement can be compared across time and place. Three shapes appear in this catalog:

• Official averages. Malaysia's CIDB N3C Building Material Price API returns 'monthly average prices for construction material specifications (cement, aggregate, bricks, etc.) by state and date range', updated monthly with one row per specification per state per month.

These record types answer different questions, and buying the wrong one wastes the budget. A tender model needs official state averages; an India procurement team comparing city quotes needs InfraLens rows, which its own README cautions are 'procurement intelligence signals rather than guaranteed executable purchase quotes'; a US retail analysis needs SKU fields such as Home Depot's originalPrice and percentageOff.

Granularity is where mismatches bite: CIDB N3C publishes one average per specification per state per month, so daily volatility never survives, while Home Depot snapshots are store-localized via a single storeId per run (default '121').

Reliability differs too. The InfraLens actor reports 100% run success over 160 runs; Home Depot Product Scraper's 30-day history shows roughly 25 succeeded runs against 17 failed and 10 timed out.

1. Match the series shape to the decision. Need a monthly official average? CIDB N3C's Building Material Price API publishes month_year_rates with an average_price per state. Need today's quote? A scraper snapshot is the only option.

1. Check unit and specification text. N3C carries unit ('Bag', 'MT', 'Piece') and pay_terms ('60 Del') per specification; InfraLens rows carry currency and unit fields.

1. Confirm cadence and history. CIDB N3C updates monthly; the Home Depot actor returns point-in-time snapshots with no archive, so history must be accumulated run by run.

1. Test reliability before committing. The InfraLens actor reports 100% success over 160 runs; Home Depot Product Scraper shows ~25 succeeded against 17 failed and 10 timed out in 30 days.

1. Read the licensing posture. N3C publishes no licence or quota terms and requires a Bearer token from an N3C account; Lowe's API sits behind partner onboarding; both Apify actors are paid per event (InfraLens from $1.00 per 1,000 results).

• clinker - the kiln-fired intermediate whose cost drives cement prices in any material price series.

See the term applied to real records: construction-materials data.