What is camelcamelcamel? How to use the Amazon price tracker.

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In a recent survey, 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 last eight years,” said Leah Stoddart, senior shopping reporter at Mashable. Global shopping editor Joseph Green agreed: “I use it about 100 times a day,” he said. “Every savvy buyer should have this.”

So, what is CamelCamelCamel? We’re not talking about a trio of actual ungulates — this is a free Amazon price-tracking tool. We use it to check out Amazon deals all year long, but it’s especially useful during major shopping events like Prime Day and Black Friday, when the retailer offers insane bargains. Camelcamelcamel makes it easy to determine whether a product’s sale price is a better deal than usual or a common occurrence. This helps to sort the scores by skips.

CamelCamelHow does Camel work?

Founded in 2008 by California-based programmer Daniel Green, 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 life. Visitors to the site can view price history charts of items 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 the camel theme, Green responded, “Why not?”) He had planned to delete the site after showing it to his friends, thinking it would just be a “short-term demo”. Then other people started using it – and kept using it.

Mashable Trend Report

Green has hired some friends to help him continue work on CamelCamelCamel, which will soon enter its second decade. He said, “We are forever grateful to the Internet for allowing us to run a self-sustaining, free website for so many years.”

Camelcamelcamel is supported by affiliate links, so if you click on an Amazon link there and buy something, Camelcamelcamel earns a commission.

Green and his team plan to add more features to the site in the near future, including product popularity metrics and a “better surface of quality items on sale.” A design update for the Camelizer is also on the docket.

Is CamelCamelCamel accurate?

Camelcamelcamel regularly checks product prices but doesn’t catch every deal Amazon offers. According to a 2011 blog post written by Green, the site can’t monitor limited-time Lightning deals, and we noticed it also doesn’t have on-page coupons. But it usually captures enough data to tell you if something is cheaper than usual – and if not, when it reached a record low 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 to the current price at Walmart or Best Buy or wherever,” said Mashable’s Stoddart. “It has unleashed shoddy discounts on competitors just as often as it has unleashed it on Amazon itself.”

Are you planning on doing a lot of Amazon shopping for your holidays in the coming weeks? Here’s a step-by-step guide to using CamelCamelCamel and The Camelizer to view a product’s price history and sign up for price drop alerts.

How to use CamelCamelCamel

How to Use Camelizer Browser Extension