How we rank offers

Three labels, three rules, no exceptions. Commission is never an input.

Best price

The lowest landed cost among offers for the same item: item price + shipping + any fee the merchant states. If a merchant does not tell us its shipping, we cannot compute a landed cost, and that offer can never be labelled Best price — however cheap the item looks. We never estimate tax.

Offers in different currencies are compared in USD using a dated European Central Bank reference rate. When no rate is available the offer is shown in its own currency and left out of the comparison. A label needs at least two comparable offers; a lone offer is just the offer.

Fastest

The shortest published delivery window, by its upper bound. An offer with no delivery evidence from the merchant is never Fastest. Ties go to the lower landed cost, then to the merchant's name, alphabetically.

Best value

Among offers with both a landed cost and a delivery window: landed cost plus one percent of the cheapest landed cost for every day of the delivery window. The label is only shown when the winner is not already Best price or Fastest.

What "live" means

A price is live only when it was read from the merchant's own endpoint inside that merchant's freshness window (24 hours for most). Older readings are shown with their date. When our evidence is too old or too weak — or the merchant forbids showing prices that did not come from their API — the card says Check current price and shows no number. Out-of-stock and stale offers cannot win a label.

Same item, or an alternative?

We only compare prices for the same item. Two listings are the same item when the maker and model identifier match, or when a shared barcode proves it. A similar-looking product with different contents — bowl only versus the full set, six booklets versus one — is shown as an alternative, never as another price for the same thing.

The rules above are implemented in code (lib/pricing.js) and pinned by tests, so the site cannot quietly drift from this page.