How to check a product’s price history
Retailers sometimes inflate a product’s “original” price right before a sale, so the discount looks bigger than it really is. The only way to tell a genuine deal from a marketing trick is to look at the price history – how the price has actually moved over time, not just what the site claims it used to cost.
Why price history matters
A “50% off” badge means nothing on its own. If a product’s real price has hovered around the “sale” price for months, it’s not actually a discount. Checking price history tells you:
- Whether the current price is actually low compared to recent months
- Whether a “limited time” sale is really limited, or runs constantly
- The best time to buy, based on how often and how far the price tends to drop
How to check price history with AnyTracker
When you track a product with AnyTracker, it records its price over time automatically, so once you’ve been tracking something for a while, you can look back at the full history, even offline, to see exactly how the price has moved. See how to set up tracking if you haven’t already.
Other ways to check price history
If you only shop on Amazon, dedicated tools like CamelCamelCamel and Keepa show historical price charts without needing to track the item yourself first, since they’ve already been logging Amazon prices for years. The tradeoff is they only work on Amazon – for any other site, you’ll need to start tracking it yourself to build up history going forward.
What actually counts as a good deal?
As a rule of thumb, compare the current price to the average price over the last 3-6 months, not to whatever “original price” is listed. If it’s meaningfully below that average, it’s a real deal. If it’s just back to a price it’s hit several times before, it’s not a special discount, even if it’s labeled as one.
Download AnyTracker and start building a price history for the things you shop for.