Compare international prices on Amazon

Depending on where you live, you may be able to shop in different Amazon stores and have access to all or at least a large selection of items in those other shops as well. There are two core reasons for doing so. First, you may be able to make bargains as prices can vary highly between Amazon stores. Second, you may buy products that are not available in the local Amazon store.

Comparing prices on Amazon is however not as easy as it sounds, as the company is not displaying any information helping you in this regard on its website. While you can compare prices manually, it is quite the strenuous task, especially if you do so often.

Amazon International Price Comparison is a browser extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (link appears dead) that displays international prices right on Amazon product pages.

The extension embeds a table just below the photos on top of Amazon product pages detailing price information that it finds in other stores. It covers nine major Amazon stores including the US, UK, German and Canadian store.

Prices are not always displayed depending on availability and maybe other factors such as localization. Usually, you are only getting prices from a selection of stores and not all of them.

The extension displays Amazon, new and used prices highlighting the cheapest price in red in each of the categories. Both new and used are offered by Amazon marketplace merchants while Amazon refers to products directly offered and shipped by the company itself.

While you would expect new and used prices to differ, you'd be surprised that Amazon's own prices also differ by a large margin. To give you a couple of examples:

• The Underworld Legacy Collection is offered for $34.99 on Amazon.com, and for $55.24 on Amazon.co.uk.
• Django Unchained Two Disc Combo is offered for $13 on Amazon.com, for $19.66 in Canada, and for $37.86 in the UK.
• The Toshiba Satellite C855-S5132NR laptop is available for $399.99 in the US, and for $634.48 in Canada.

The extension may help you find cheaper prices on Amazon, provided that you may order products from the cheapest priced store. There are ways around country restrictions though which you may want to explore. Most act as a proxy for you so that the products that you have ordered get send to the proxy company's warehouse from where it is then transferred to your location.

Verdict

The Amazon International Price Comparison extension provides you with options to compare prices right on Amazon product pages. You are usually getting pricing information for a couple of stores only, for instance if products are not available in select stores, or if localized versions are available instead only.

If you are shopping often on Amazon, you may find the extension useful as you may be able to make a bargain by making the purchase in a different store. Remember that shipping and handling costs need to be added, which means that doing so only makes sense for high priced items or bulk orders.

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