What is camelcamelcamel? Just our secret weapon for finding the lowest prices on Amazon.
In the world of online shopping, especially during major sales events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday, having the right tools can make all the difference. One such tool that has gained unanimous praise among Mashable staff is Camelcamelcamel, a free price-tracking service specifically designed for Amazon products. Senior Shopping Reporter Leah Stodart and Global Shopping Editor Joseph Green both highlighted its utility, with Green noting he uses it nearly 100 times a day. Camelcamelcamel allows users to determine whether a product’s sale price is genuinely a good deal or just a common occurrence, making it an essential resource for savvy shoppers looking to maximize their savings.
Founded in 2008 by programmer Daniel Green, Camelcamelcamel leverages Amazon’s Product Advertising API to track the price history of millions of items. Users can access detailed price history charts and set up email alerts for price drops, ensuring they never miss a great deal. Green originally created the site as a coding experiment, but it quickly gained traction, leading him to expand the project with the help of friends. The site remains free to users, supported by affiliate links that provide commissions on purchases made through its recommendations. While Camelcamelcamel primarily focuses on Amazon, it can also be used to compare prices across other retailers, allowing users to identify when competitors are offering less favorable discounts.
As Camelcamelcamel approaches its second decade, Green and his team are planning to introduce new features, such as product popularity metrics and an updated design for their browser extension, The Camelizer. While the service is not infallible—missing out on certain limited-time Lightning deals and on-page coupons—it generally provides enough data to help users make informed purchasing decisions. For those looking to optimize their upcoming holiday shopping on Amazon, Camelcamelcamel serves as a straightforward and effective tool for tracking prices and finding the best deals. The article concludes with a practical guide on how to use both Camelcamelcamel and The Camelizer, ensuring that readers can easily navigate the price-tracking process and make the most of their shopping experience.
In a recent poll amongst ourselves, my colleagues and I were unanimous:
Camelcamelcamel
is our favorite deal-finding tool.
“Camelcamelcamel has helped me make better shopping recommendations on a weekly, sometimes daily basis for the past eight years,” said Mashable Senior Shopping Reporter Leah Stodart. Global Shopping Editor Joseph Green concurred: “I use it probably close to 100 times a day,” he said. “Every sensible shopper should have it on hand.”
So, what is camelcamelcamel? We’re not talking about a trio of actual ungulates — it’s a free
Amazon
price-tracking tool. We use it to vet Amazon deals year-round, but it’s especially handy during major shopping events like
Prime Day
and
Black Friday
, when the retailer goes into deals overdrive. Camelcamelcamel makes it easy to determine whether a product’s sale price is a better-than-usual deal or a common occurrence. It helps sort the scores from the skips.
SEE ALSO:
The 40+ best early Black Friday deals: We found record prices on Apple gadgets, headphones, TVs, and robot vacuums
How camelcamelcamel works
Founded in 2008 by
Daniel Green
, a California-based programmer, camelcamelcamel uses Amazon’s
Product Advertising API
(product data for affiliate marketers and developers) to track the prices of millions of items throughout their shelf lives. Visitors to the site can view items’ price history charts and sign up for price drop notifications via email. These features are also available through
The Camelizer
, camelcamelcamel’s browser extension.
Green told Mashable via email that camelcamelcamel began as “a code experiment” with Amazon’s API that he built into a web interface and eventually published online. (When asked why he went with a camel theme, Green countered, “Why not?!”) He’d planned on taking the site down after showing it to his friends, thinking it would just be a “short-lived demo.” Then other people started using it — and kept using it.
Green wound up hiring some friends to help him continue working on camelcamelcamel, which will soon enter its second decade. “We are eternally grateful to the internet for allowing us to run a self-sustaining, free website for so many years,” he said.
Camelcamelcamel is
supported
by affiliate links, so if you click on an Amazon link there and wind up buying something, camelcamelcamel earns a commission.
SEE ALSO:
Amazon Prime Day vs. Black Friday: When are the deals better?
Green and his team are planning to add more features to the site in the near future, including product popularity metrics and “better surfacing of quality items that are on sale,” he said. A design update for The Camelizer is also on the docket.
Is camelcamelcamel accurate?
Camelcamelcamel checks product prices
regularly
but doesn’t catch every deal Amazon offers. The site can’t monitor limited-time
Lightning deals
, according to a 2011
blog post
Green wrote, and we’ve noticed that it also misses on-page coupons. But it typically captures enough data to tell you whether something’s cheaper than usual — and if not, when it’s hit record lows in the past.
Does camelcamelcamel only work on Amazon?
While camelcamelcamel only works on Amazon products, it’s still useful for cross-checking deals elsewhere. “I’ve used camelcamelcamel to compare an item’s Amazon price history with the current price at
Walmart
or
Best Buy
or wherever,” said Mashable’s Stodart. “It has exposed crappy discounts at competitors as many times as it has snitched on Amazon itself.”
Planning on doing a lot of your holiday shopping on Amazon in the coming weeks? Here’s a step-by-step guide to using camelcamelcamel and The Camelizer to look up a product’s price history and sign up for price drop alerts.
How to use camelcamelcamel
Total Time
10 seconds
What You Need
A device with an internet connection
Step 1:
Copy the product’s Amazon URL.
I’ll use
this Apple MacBook Air
as an example.
Step 2:
Go to camelcamelcamel.com.
Step 3:
Paste the product’s Amazon URL into camelcamelcamel’s search bar, then hit enter.
Step 4:
A chart on the next page will show the product’s price history since launch.
This MacBook Air was sitting at a
new record-low price
on Amazon at the time of writing.
Credit: camelcamelcamel.com
Step 5:
If you want to buy the product for a lower price than it’s currently at, you can sign up for deal alerts by clicking the blue “+ Add Amazon Price Watch” button on the right side of the page.
Camelcamelcamel will send you an email if/when the product hits your desired price.
Credit: camelcamelcamel.com
How to use The Camelizer browser extension
Total Time
10 seconds
What You Need
A device with an internet connection
Step 1:
Install The Camelizer browser extension.
It’s available for
Chrome
,
Safari
,
Edge
,
Firefox
, and
Opera
.
Step 2:
Pull up the product’s Amazon listing.
Step 3:
Click The Camelizer’s icon in your browser’s toolbar.
The same price history chart will populate in a drop-down window. You can set email alerts for price drops in the lower fields.
Credit: Amazon.com / The Camelizer
