Is the Amazon price ever the best price?

For most consumer products, Amazon UK is the largest single seller and its price is what everyone else is measured against. That makes it a good reference. It doesn't make it the lowest price, and the assumption that it is costs UK shoppers a lot of money.

Where Amazon wins

Amazon is usually cheapest on fast-moving consumer electronics — cables, storage, peripherals, headphones — where it competes with itself through its marketplace and prices are close to cost. It's also strong on its own devices and on anything with a Prime Day promotion. On these, the retailer deals we list are rarely below Amazon and we say so.

Where Amazon loses

Large appliances: Amazon doesn't stock most of them directly, and the marketplace sellers who do add delivery costs. Hughes, AO and Currys are routinely cheaper on a delivered basis. Power tools: the trade retailers undercut Amazon on brand-name tools because they buy in bulk from the same distributors and don't pay marketplace fees. Watches: authorised retailers discount fashion brands far below Amazon, which sells many at RRP. Specialist categories — car audio, equestrian, lighting — where the specialist retailer's volume in that niche beats Amazon's breadth.

The marketplace problem

The price shown on Amazon is often a third-party seller's, not Amazon's own. Third-party pricing is set by software and can be wildly out — a product listed at £3,365 that sells for £52 elsewhere is a seller's algorithm gone wrong, not a market price. We filter these out: if a retailer is more than 70 percent below the Amazon listing, we treat the Amazon figure as broken and don't publish the comparison.

What we do

Every product on this site is matched to Amazon UK by its product code, and the deal page shows both prices. When the retailer is genuinely below Amazon, that's a strong signal because it means the retailer is below the market, not just below its own label. When it isn't, we still list the product if it's below the retailer's RRP, but we show you the Amazon figure so you can decide.