How to Compare Prices Online
Five things that decide whether you actually got the better deal — most of which have nothing to do with the number on the product page.
Compare the landed total, never the sticker
The only figure worth comparing is what leaves your account: price plus shipping, plus any handling or import charge the shop adds. A £5 saving undone by £8 of delivery is not a saving, and shops that show shipping only at checkout are relying on you comparing the wrong number.
Work in one currency, too. A converted price is comparable; a foreign one next to a domestic one is not, and the difference between them is often mostly the exchange rate.
Watch the free-shipping threshold
Thresholds distort comparisons in a way that is easy to miss. Buying two items from one shop can beat buying each from its individually cheapest seller, simply because one order crosses a free-delivery line and two do not.
If you are buying several things, compare whole baskets rather than individual items. The cheapest split is often not the one with the cheapest rows.
Read ratings as evidence, not as a score
A rating without a volume attached is close to meaningless. Five stars from four reviews carries far less information than 4.6 from twenty thousand, and treating them as equivalent is how shoppers end up at shops that cannot ship.
Look at how recent the reviews are as well. A shop's service can change faster than its lifetime average does.
Check the price has a history
"Was £200, now £120" is only useful if anything was ever sold at £200. A price chart answers that in a second, and the answer is often that the higher figure appeared a week before the sale.
For anything not urgent, a price line also tells you whether you are near the bottom of a normal range or at the top of one.
Decide whether to wait
Some categories move predictably — electronics around new model launches, seasonal goods after the season. If a price is mid-range against its own history and you are not in a hurry, an alert costs nothing and waiting sometimes pays.
Try it on something you are buying
Describe it the way you would to a person. This one is ready to run:
Search “cordless vacuum under $250”Common questions
- Is the cheapest price always the best deal?
- No. The cheapest landed total from a seller that ships reliably usually is. A slightly lower price from a shop with no track record, a long delivery window or an awkward returns policy is a different proposition, and the gap has to be big enough to be worth it.
- Should I include shipping when comparing?
- Always. It is the single most common reason a comparison comes out wrong, and it is the figure shops are most willing to leave until checkout.
- How can I tell a real discount from a fake one?
- Look at the price over time. A genuine reduction cuts into a price that was actually being charged; a manufactured one cuts from a figure that appeared shortly before the sale and was never paid.
- Do coupon codes change the comparison?
- They can, and they are worth checking at the end rather than the beginning — a code applies to one shop, so it changes that shop's total rather than the ordering of everything else. Compare landed totals first, then apply what you have.