camelcamelcamel: See Any Amazon Price Before You Buy

camelcamelcamel is a free Amazon price tracker that draws the entire price history of any product as a chart. Paste a product link, look at the line, and you instantly know whether today’s “40% off” is a real discount or a number that was invented last Tuesday.

Yes, that is really the name. Yes, it has saved people an enormous amount of money.

What is camelcamelcamel?

Amazon prices move constantly. The same item can swing dozens of percent in a month, and the strikethrough “list price” next to a deal is often fiction. Without history you have no way to judge any of it. You just get told it is a good price and, reasonably enough, you believe it.

camelcamelcamel has been recording those prices for years. Feed it a product and it plots three lines: what Amazon itself charged, what third-party sellers charged new, and what used copies went for. The all-time high and all-time low sit right there in a summary table.

That single chart changes how you shop. A gadget “on sale” at $180 looks very different when the line shows it sat at $150 for four months and got bumped to $220 the week before the sale started. It also works the other way: sometimes the chart confirms you are looking at the lowest price ever recorded, and you can hit buy without the usual doubt.

The site is free, needs no account for lookups, and covers multiple Amazon regional stores.

What can you do on camelcamelcamel?

• Read the full price history. Paste a URL or search by product name. The chart goes back years on established items.
• See the all-time low. The number that actually tells you whether to wait. Compare it against today.
• Set price drop alerts. Give it a target price and an email address. When the item hits it, you get told. Set it and forget it for months if you like.
• Track used prices too. For books, cameras and anything durable, the used line is often the real bargain.
• Import a wishlist. Bring your Amazon wishlist over and get tracking on the whole thing at once.
• Install the Camelizer extension. It puts the price history chart directly on the Amazon product page, so you never have to leave to check.
• Browse current top drops. The site surfaces the biggest recent price falls across categories if you want to shop opportunistically.

Tips to get the most out of it

1. Set alerts instead of watching. Almost nobody is disciplined enough to check a price daily for six weeks. An email alert at your target price does it for you and removes the temptation to cave early.
2. Set the alert below the all-time low, not at it. If you genuinely do not need the item now, aim slightly under the record and let it come to you. Prices on popular electronics revisit their lows more often than you would think.
3. Install the Camelizer. The friction of copying URLs is what stops people using price trackers. Having the chart appear on the page removes it entirely, and then you check every time.
4. Check before the big sale events, not during. Note prices a few weeks ahead. When the sale arrives, the chart tells you which discounts are theater and which are real.
5. Watch the third-party line on sold-out items. When Amazon runs out, third-party prices spike. The chart makes it obvious when you are being gouged versus when that is just the market.
6. Use it on expensive things first. A five-dollar saving is not worth the workflow. A hundred-dollar saving on a monitor absolutely is.

If you like camelcamelcamel, also try…

• Have I Been Pwned: another “check before you trust” tool, this one for your email address.
• Omni Calculator: run the actual finance math on whether the deal is worth it.
• JustDeleteMe: direct links to close accounts on all the shopping sites you signed up to once.
• Our World in Data: if reading charts to make better decisions is your thing, this is the deep end.

Find more in Tools & Utilities.

Before your next Amazon purchase, run it through camelcamelcamel. Worst case you learn something. Best case you keep your money.