- Free tools that show you whether a “deal” is genuinely discounted
- Browser extensions worth installing — and which ones to skip
- Simple habits that catch bad deals before you buy
You don’t need to be a professional bargain hunter to shop well online. A handful of free tools and a few simple habits will catch most inflated discounts, fake deals, and “sales” that aren’t really sales. Here’s what actually works.
Price history checkers: the single most useful tool
Before you buy anything over about $50, spend 30 seconds checking its price history. These tools show you what a product has actually sold for over time — not just what the retailer claims the “original” price was.
CamelCamelCamel — Tracks Amazon prices going back years. Paste in an Amazon product URL and you’ll see a graph of every price change. A “50% off” deal that’s been selling at the same price for six months isn’t a deal at all. Free, no account needed.
Keepa — Similar to CamelCamelCamel but with more features. Shows price history as a graph directly on the Amazon product page via a browser extension. Also tracks stock availability, which is useful for knowing whether “only 2 left” is real or a pressure tactic.
These only work for Amazon, but since Amazon is where most Australians start their product searches, they cover a lot of ground.
Browser extensions: the useful ones and the ones to skip
Worth installing:
- CamelCamelCamel extension — adds a price history graph directly to Amazon product pages so you don’t have to visit a separate site
- Keepa extension — same idea, more detailed data, works well alongside CamelCamelCamel
Worth knowing about but with a caveat:
- Honey / PayPal Honey — automatically tries coupon codes at checkout. Useful when it works, but the real value is the price history feature (Droplist) that tracks products and alerts you when they drop. The coupon-finding part is hit and miss — most codes it finds are already publicly available.
- Capital One Shopping — similar to Honey. Compares prices across retailers and applies coupons. The catch: it’s owned by a bank, and the business model involves collecting purchase data. Whether that bothers you is a personal call.
Skip these:
- Anything promising “automatic cashback on every purchase” without explaining how — the cashback usually comes from selling your purchase data
- Extensions that inject ads into your search results or product pages
Setting price alerts rather than checking manually
If you’re not in a hurry, watching a product and waiting is almost always better than buying the first “deal” you see. CamelCamelCamel and Keepa both let you set a target price and get an email when the product drops to that level.
For products across multiple marketplaces, Dealiroo’s Hop List feature lets you track items and get notified when the price drops — so you’re not checking Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress individually every day.
Reverse image search: find the same product everywhere
This one is underused and genuinely powerful. If you find a product on one site — say, a lamp on Amazon for $89 — save the product image and run it through Google Lens or Google Image Search. You’ll often find the exact same product on AliExpress for significantly less, or on eBay from a different seller with a better price.
This works especially well for home goods, furniture, basic electronics accessories, and anything that’s likely a white-label product sold by multiple retailers under different names.
Incognito mode and dynamic pricing: does it matter?
You’ve probably heard that websites show different prices based on your browsing history — that flights get more expensive if you search repeatedly, or that Amazon shows higher prices to returning visitors.
The reality: dynamic pricing exists, but it’s much less dramatic than most people think. For physical products on Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress, the price you see in an incognito window is almost always identical to the price you see logged in. Airlines and hotels do this more aggressively; retail marketplaces generally don’t.
Worth checking for big purchases if you want to be thorough, but not something to stress about for everyday shopping.
The simplest habit that catches most bad deals
Before buying anything on sale, search the product name on one other site. That’s it. A 30-second Google search will tell you:
- Whether the “was” price is real or inflated (are other retailers charging close to the “original” price, or close to the “sale” price?)
- Whether the same product is available cheaper elsewhere
- Whether the product has serious quality issues that reviews consistently mention
This single habit catches more bad deals than any tool or extension. Everything else on this page is just making that habit faster and more thorough.