Spycost
Fell for a discount again?
491 followers
Fell for a discount again?
491 followers
Remember the last time you bought something at a discount, only to see it later for the same price without the discount? Or when the product costs more today than it did yesterday. Did you feel cheated? Are you ready to look behind the screen of manipulation and lies? Spycost helps you see when you’re paying more while thinking you’re paying less. It gives you the full price picture, so you can decide whether it’s actually worth it.
One thing that would make Spycost really useful for me is a simple browser extension that automatically flags price drops and fake discounts while I shop, instead of me having to look things up manually each time.
Spycost
@aysunvcyf thank you so much for checking out Spycost! I really appreciate the support. I built it from a pretty personal frustration with confusing discounts, so it means a lot to see people connect with the idea.
A browser extension is also one of the next priority tasks. The goal is to help you spot price changes and get warnings directly while shopping, without having to leave the product page or break your flow.
Would love a browser extension version so it can auto-track prices while I shop instead of me having to look things up manually every time, would make it way easier to catch those sneaky price jumps in the moment.
Spycost
@sevilckr0 thank you for the comment! A browser extension is actually the next highest-priority goal for Spycost.
I think it can make the whole experience much more natural: instead of switching between tools or remembering to check prices later, you’ll be able to keep shopping as usual and see the important price context directly on the product page. That’s the direction I’m most excited to build next.
Is there a browser extension that allow me to see price history for specific product directly on PDP?
Project look interesting, good luck 🍀 with launch
Spycost
@spiri7 thank you! Not yet, but a browser extension is already in the backlog and it’s one of the priority next steps for Spycost. The idea is exactly that: to let you open a product page and quickly see the price history directly there, without needing to switch context.
FuseBase
Spycost
@kate_ramakaieva thank you so much, Kate! Really appreciate the support. Right now Spycost is focused on the mobile app, and the browser extension is definitely one of the next priority steps. The idea is to make price tracking useful directly while shopping, without needing to switch context.
Spycost
@nadiia_prokofieva thank you! Spycost isn’t limited to a fixed list of retailers. It’s designed to work with the vast majority of online stores, and so far it has worked well across different shops and regions.
Right now the focus is reliable tracking for specific products, but I definitely want to expand this in the future so you can track not only one exact product, but a whole product class too, for example coffee machines with certain parameters across multiple brands and stores.
Spycost
@william_zhan Thanks William. Cashback is definitely on my radar. For this launch I kept Spycost focused on the base price history first, because that is the part that helps detect fake discounts and inflated reference prices most reliably.
But I agree that the real buying decision is not only the listed price. Cashback, coupons, shipping, taxes, and card offers can all change the final effective price. I would like Spycost to eventually show that full context, so you can compare the real total cost instead of just trusting a discount label.
Love the idea, I've been burned by fake discounts before, but I also wonder how often the best price is worth waiting weeks or months for.
Spycost
@reda_roqai_chaoui thank you, Reda! That's exactly the tradeoff I think about too. The goal isn't to make people wait forever for the absolute lowest price, because sometimes buying now is worth it. Spycost is more about giving you the context: was this price recently normal, is it trending down, and does the "discount" actually look real. Then you can decide whether waiting makes sense for that specific product.
Context specific is the right call. What saved us when we stored scraped prices was writing the request context into the same row as the number, so region, currency and whether we were logged in all travelled with it. Before that we lost an afternoon chasing a price drop that turned out to be a different geo answering the same URL.
Spycost
@dipankar_sarkar exactly, that’s a very useful lesson. The price itself is only half of the data; the request context has to travel with it, otherwise the history can become misleading very quickly.
That’s the direction I’m taking with Spycost too: each snapshot should be tied to the context that produced it, like region, currency, store conditions, availability, and whether it came from an anonymous or user-side session. Then the baseline is not just “this URL was X yesterday”, but “this product under this context was X yesterday”.
Your geo example is exactly the kind of false signal I want to avoid. If the data is mixed or uncertain, Spycost should make that visible instead of pretending the answer is cleaner than it really is.