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The 7 best price trackers in 2026, tested on real stores (Payback #1 pick)

By Payback. September 20, 2026

The short version: a price tracker tells you what something really cost before today, so you can tell a real deal from a made-up one. The famous ones only watch Amazon. The coupon extensions watch a few items you save. Payback watches hundreds of thousands of regular online stores every day, and it's the only tracker here that keeps working after you buy, by checking your receipts and going after a refund when the "sale" was never real.

A quick disclosure before the list: Payback makes Payback. We put ourselves first because we think we earn it for most shoppers, and we say exactly where each other tool beats us. We're a consumer company, not a law firm, and none of this is legal advice.

How we picked

We judged every tool on four things a shopper actually cares about. Does it work outside Amazon? Does it show real history, not just today's comparison? Can it tell a fake "was" price from a real one? And does it do anything for you after you've already paid? That last one matters more than people think, and we'll explain why in a minute.

1. Payback: best overall, and the only one that works after you buy

Payback isn't a browser extension, and it doesn't show you a price graph while you shop. Instead, you connect the inbox where your order receipts land, with read-only access. We record the prices on the online stores in our index every day, and we compare each order you made against what that store was really charging before and after. When a store ran a sale that never ended, or showed a "was" price it never charged, we ask the store for your refund. You keep what you bought.

That's a different job from Keepa's, and it's on purpose. Here's the part most price-tracker articles get wrong. The protection you have against a fake sale comes from being deceived by it. If a store lies about its old price and you believe it, that's the deception the rules are written for, and it's what gives you a real claim to your money back. If you already knew the sale was fake and bought anyway, there was no deception, and there's not much anyone can do for you. So a tool that shows you the price history before you buy is great for avoiding a bad deal, but it can quietly cost you the refund you'd have been owed. Payback keeps the price history on our side, checks it after the purchase, and uses it as evidence. That's why we think it's the right tool for most people, and it's why it costs nothing unless we get money back for you.

• Pros: works on regular online stores, not just Amazon. Daily price records, not snapshots. Checks orders you already made. Pursues the refund for you. Free to join, and you pay nothing unless money comes back.
• Cons: no graph to look at while you browse. Only covers stores in our index. You have to connect your inbox, which not everyone wants to do, even read-only.
• Best for: anyone who buys from brands' own websites, Shopify stores, or mid-size retailers, which is where most fake sales live now.

2. Keepa: best for Amazon

Keepa is the price tracker most people mean when they say price tracker. It's a browser extension and a website that shows the full price history of any Amazon listing, going back years, including third-party sellers and used prices. You can set an alert for any price you want. The free tier does almost everything a shopper needs.

• Pros: the deepest Amazon history anywhere. Tracks every seller. Alerts. International Amazon sites.
• Cons: Amazon only. The graphs are dense and take a minute to learn. Does nothing after you buy.
• Best for: anyone who does most of their shopping on Amazon.

3. CamelCamelCamel: simplest Amazon tracker

CamelCamelCamel does one thing: paste an Amazon link, get a price graph. No account, no clutter. It's been around forever and it still works. If Keepa feels like too much, this is the one.

• Pros: free, no account, dead simple. Email alerts if you want them.
• Cons: Amazon only. Less detail than Keepa. Nothing after purchase.
• Best for: occasional Amazon shoppers who just want to see the graph.

4. Google Shopping: best quick gut check

Search a product on Google, open the Shopping tab, and on many bigger products you'll see a "typical price" range or a "price is low" badge. It's based on Google's own recent data across stores, and it's a fast way to tell whether a strike-through price is anywhere near reality. It's not a tracker you can set alerts on, and it's thin on small stores, but it costs nothing and takes ten seconds.

• Pros: free, no install, covers many stores at once.
• Cons: no real history graph. Spotty on smaller stores. No alerts, nothing after purchase.
• Best for: a ten-second check before you click buy.

5. Karma: best if you want coupons too

Karma is a shopping app and extension that saves items across many stores, alerts you when a saved item's price drops, applies coupon codes, and pays cashback. The price-drop alerts are the tracker part, and they work at a lot of stores Keepa can't see. The limit is what a price drop can tell you. If a store has been running a fake 50% off for eight months, the price never drops, so Karma never says a word. It also does nothing once you've bought.

• Pros: many stores. Price-drop alerts on saved items. Coupons and cashback in the same tool.
• Cons: only tracks items you save. Can't tell a fake "was" price from a real one. Nothing after purchase.
• Best for: people who already use a coupon extension and want alerts on a wishlist.

6. Honey: coupons first, tracking second

Honey, owned by PayPal, is mostly a coupon tool. It has a "droplist" where you save items and get told when they get cheaper, and it shows price history on some Amazon listings. It's fine for what it is. Like Karma, it can tell you a price fell, but it has no opinion on whether the price was honest to begin with.

• Pros: coupons at checkout. Droplist alerts. Some Amazon history.
• Cons: tracking is an afterthought. Only items you save. Nothing after purchase.
• Best for: shoppers who mainly want codes and would like a little tracking on the side.

7. Slickdeals: best for finding deals

Slickdeals isn't a tracker, but it belongs on this list because the community does something no algorithm does well: it argues. Post a "deal" that's really the everyday price and someone will say so in the comments within the hour. You can set alerts for products or categories. What it can't do is check a store nobody has posted about, or help with an order you already placed.

• Pros: real people calling out fake deals. Alerts. Free.
• Cons: only covers what gets posted. No history graph. Nothing after purchase.
• Best for: deal hunters who enjoy the hunt.

Side by side

What a price tracker can and can't tell you

A tracker shows you what a listing sold for over time. That's enough to catch the most common fake discount, the one where the "was" price was never charged. Look at the graph, and if the line never touched the strike-through number, the discount is fiction.

What a tracker can't do is cover the stores it doesn't watch, which for the big Amazon trackers is every store that isn't Amazon. And none of them can do anything about money you've already spent. If you want the full list of warning signs, we wrote them up in how to spot fake discounts online. If you want the broader comparison of every tool people mention, including the ones that don't help shoppers at all, it's in the best apps to detect fake sales.

Final verdict

If you shop on Amazon, use Keepa. It's free and it's excellent. If you shop anywhere else, which is where fake sales actually live now, use Payback, because it's the only tool that tracks those stores every day and the only one that does anything for you after you've paid. And there's no reason not to use both: a tracker before you buy on Amazon, Payback after you buy everywhere.

We hold brands accountable for the little guys.

Payback is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. This article is our own opinion, based on the pricing data we collect. It isn't a prediction of any outcome or a legal opinion about your order. If you want legal advice, talk to a lawyer licensed in your state.