How we check deals

Short version: we record real prices ourselves, every day, and compare deals against those records rather than the retailer’s own claims.

1. Collecting prices

• We check thousands of product pages at UK shops once a day, starting 13 Oct 2026.
• Our crawler identifies itself (“WasItRealPriceBot”), follows each shop’s robots.txt, waits 8–12 seconds between requests to the same shop, and never gets around blocks or captchas.
• We only read the price the shop publishes in its page’s structured data. If we can’t read a price, that day is left blank, never filled in.
• We don’t copy product photos unless a shop’s terms allow it, which is why most products show an icon.

2. Matching across shops

Hundreds of products are tracked at two or more shops. We match them by manufacturer model code and check that the code appears on each shop’s page. Product pages show a comparison table with the cheapest current price.

3. Testing “was” prices

UK guidance from the CMA says a reference price such as “was £X” should be a genuine price the trader has recently charged, and the saving claimed must be real (CMA207; Guidance for Traders on Pricing Practices). We compare the was-price with our own records; full scoring rules are on How we score.

• Price drops: falls against prices we recorded in the previous 7 days.
• Was-prices we’ve never seen charged: was-prices above every price in at least 30 days of our records, checked by hand.

4. Limits

We check once a day, so a price that changed and changed back between checks won’t appear. Our records began on 13 Oct 2026. Delivery, membership prices, vouchers and cashback are not included. Always confirm on the shop’s site before you buy.

Questions

Where do your prices come from?

From each retailer’s own public product page, once a day. We read the price the retailer publishes in the page’s structured data (schema.org). We never estimate, interpolate or back-fill a missing day.

Which retailers do you track?

Box, Electrical Discount UK, Euronics, Hughes, John Lewis, Lakeland, PRC Direct, Peter Tyson, Sonic Direct, Toolstation. We only track shops whose robots.txt allows it and whose website terms don’t prohibit automated price collection. If a shop blocks us, we stop.

How do you know two shops sell the same product?

We match on the manufacturer’s model code (for example a TV’s full model number), not on product names. Different colours or bundles have different model codes, so they are not mixed up.

What does “cheapest now” mean?

The lowest price among shops we checked in the last two days, excluding delivery charges. Shops we couldn’t check recently are shown as out of date and are not counted.

When do you give a verdict on a deal?

Only after 30 days of our own records for that product. Until then we show the history so far and label it “Collecting data”.

Are your verdicts paid for?

No. Some “Check on Amazon” links are affiliate links (marked #ad), but money never changes a verdict or the order of a list.

Spotted a mistake? Tell us. Last updated 26 Oct 2026.