What is camelcamelcamel? Just our secret weapon for finding the lowest prices on Amazon.
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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.
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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.
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
- 10 seconds
- 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.
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.
How to use The Camelizer browser extension
- 10 seconds
- 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.
Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what’s actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons.
