Show HN: Price per unit analysis on Amazon listings | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Price per unit analysis on Amazon listings

unitprice.org

21 pointszapstar11 comments

I developed https://unitprice.org for a number of reasons. I like aggregating and parsing data, I like shopping at Amazon, and I like finding the best deal. I also wanted an excuse to experiment with static website generators (specifically Jekyll). And so here we are!

When purchasing pacifiers for my son (and despite my new-dad stupor), I realized that the greater quantity pack cost more per pacifier than the smaller quantity pack! This has continued to nag at me. Have I been missing out on some savings per unit for other products too? Is the giant quantity diaper box always the best choice? How can I grow my son's collection of Duplo bricks with the least cost per brick? These questions were the catalyst that led to the creation of this website.

I'd love to hear any helpful feedback you have to share. Specifically, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the information that I'm offering, the organization of the website, and the products that I'm analyzing. For that last one, please share any additions that you'd like to see! Ideas on how I can grow and expand this concept would be greatly appreciated as well.

If you're looking for the lowest price, Amazon probably isn't the best place to look. While I don't buy paper towels on the internet, when I look at low end things like an ESP32 dev board, or a set of small screw drivers, EBay is by far the better deal even when limited to "Fast and Free" delivery. Aliexpress usually has even better deals, though usually with much longer shipping times.

That’s a great point. Amazon isn’t a good deal for many things. The example I recall is mason jars. I never had a need for mason jars and had never bought them before. But then I needed some to brew cold brew. Looked them up on Amazon and thought “I guess $5 a piece is reasonable?” At a local hardware store, I found the same exact ones for $1. They get away with higher prices because people don’t know that a better deal exists elsewhere (because they don’t know what a reasonable price point even is).

I don’t plan on adding product types that are a bad deal on Amazon. At this point, I’ve added products that I genuinely purchase on Amazon. (Can you tell that I have a two-year-old that likes crayons, chalk, and Duplo?)

For those that are curious, this was built with some python scripts calling Amazon’s Product API, resulting in the generation of some data files that are fed into Jekyll, which generates the static website.

It’s been a fun project using different technologies! Working with a static website generator requires a totally different mindset.

I did something similar a while back and the amazon affiliate program cut me off after the first sale. They don’t like price comparison websites. CamelCamelCamel seems to be using affiliate links though, so I guess it’s still possible.

Were you comparing Amazon’s prices to a different retailer’s? Or comparing Amazon to Amazon? I’ve heard of the former being shut down, but not the latter.

I was showing stuff from eBay too. Good point, that was probably it.

Would you be interested in collaborating on this? I've still got a lot of code from my last attempt.

This is really neat. I cant wait for this to be searchable and have people add their own categories

Thank you! Do you have any categories that you’d like me to add in the next day or two?

Such a great idea! Will only get better as it grows. One for the bookmarks.

Thank you! Any additional features you’d like to see? Or product categories tracked? I was also thinking about potentially letting people subscribe to some sort of routine newsletter/summary about that day’s/week’s trends.

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