Luxury Auction & Live Bidding App for iOS & Android
A real-time auction platform for luxury collectibles in the UAE, live bidding, identity-verified buyers and sellers, and a commission and payment flow built for how the auction house actually operates.
01 / The Challenge
Bringing a live auction house online, without losing the trust
Luxury collectibles are still mostly traded in person. Moving that experience online meant real bidder verification, a fee model that made sense for both a 5,000 AED lot and a 150,000 AED one, and bidding rules that felt fair the moment the clock is running out.
High-value collectibles, watches, bags and art, still traded mostly through in-person auction houses, with no lightweight way to run live, time-boxed bidding online for UAE buyers and sellers
Every sale can run into the tens of thousands of AED, so bidder identity and payment needed real compliance, not just a login screen
A real-time auction with no protection against last-minute sniping would undermine the trust the platform depends on
Commission had to split cleanly between a flat fee for smaller lots and a percentage fee for high-value ones, calculated automatically on every sale
02 / Here is What We Did
A live bidding platform, built like an auction house would run it
We built a Flutter app on top of a Laravel backend, with Socket.IO carrying live bid updates so every bidder on a lot sees the same price and countdown in real time. Identity verification, Stripe deposits, and the commission logic were wired in from day one rather than bolted on afterward.
The auction rules, the extension window, proxy bidding, the reserve price, are enforced server-side, so the app can never show a bidder something the backend won’t honour.
Bidding Engine
Real-time lot pages in Flutter over Socket.IO, backed by a Laravel API tracking bids, lots and auction status.
Trust & Payments
Emirates ID identity verification, Stripe-based deposit collection, and automatic PDF invoice generation for both buyer and seller.
Auction Rules
Built the 10-minute anti-sniping extension, proxy bidding and the tiered commission model directly into the bidding flow.
03 / Features
Everything a live luxury auction needs
“Gavel It” and “Gaveled” tabs separate the auctions a user is actively bidding on from the ones they've already won, each lot showing a running or scheduled status and a live countdown.
Real-time bid updates over Socket.IO, so every bidder on a lot sees the current highest bid and time remaining update instantly, with no manual refresh.
A 10-minute anti-sniping rule: any bid placed in the final 10 minutes extends the auction, and further bids inside that window keep extending it.
Emirates ID identity verification and a guided seller flow for listing watches and bags, with category selection and photo uploads.
Stripe-based deposit collection at bid time, with the remaining balance settled by cash or bank transfer within 24 hours of winning, backed by automatically generated PDF invoices.
An automatic commission engine, a flat 600 AED fee below 30,000 AED, or 2% of the final sale price at or above it, with no extra premiums added on top.
04 / Technologies
A Flutter app, a Laravel backend, and a live socket layer between them
05 / Results & Impact
Auction rules that hold up when the clock is running out
“Gavel is a Dubai-based online auction platform that specializes in curating and auctioning luxury collectibles of unparalleled quality and rarity, emerging as a premier destination for collectors and connoisseurs.”
gavel.ae
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