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Comment by juxtaposicion | Hacker News Reader

I’m building Popgot (https://popgot.com): compare unit prices (per oz/sheet/lb) across Costco, Walmart, Target, and Amazon. We normalize fuzzy sizes (“family,” “mega,” multipacks) so you see the actually cheapest option for staples.

New: a deep research mode that, on demand, crawls thousands of product pages and uses visual LLMs to read label photos (ingredients, counts, square footage) when the text is messy. First run takes ~60–90s, then it’s cached.

A good torture test: 20×25×1 MERV 13 home air filters—listings mix single/4/6/12-packs and vague claims (“3-month,” “allergen defense”), which wreck per-unit comparisons. I’d love feedback on misses (coupons/Subscribe & Save/region), categories to add, and to collaborate with a grocery-list app, budgeting tool, or anyone in the frugal/deals space. chris@popgot.com

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I see paper towels but no toilet paper? I think toilet paper is the most confusing one

edit: also this doesn't seem correct:

Everything above will save you $57.65 on 33 fl oz

https://popgot.com/shampoo?attributes=scalp_concern%3Adandru...

I had to look at that carefully, but I think that "save you $57.65 on 33 fl oz" is both technically and meaningfully correct. It compares our best choice to the most popular choice -- we use the product with the most ratings as a proxy for that. Nizoral 2-in-1 has a crazy 100k reviews, but it is in fact almost 20x more expensive per fluid ounce! And it is the most popular product@

If you hover the text it explains the logic (you can see that in this screenshot https://imgur.com/a/hO7fiWR). But to replay the logic here:

Equate 2 in 1 Dandruff Shampoo 28.2oz is 21¢/fl oz (for 33 fl oz it costs $6.99) is the Popgot choice.

But the most popular (e.g. most reviewed) product is "Nizoral 2-in-1 Anti-Dandruff Shampoo" and that costs a whopping $1.96/fl oz (33 fl oz it costs $64.63)

So yes, the most popular anti-dandruff shampoo (which I used to use, until I saw this shampoo list https://popgot.com/shampoo?attributes=scalp_concern%3Adandru...) is literally 20x more expensive, so you can do a lot better by picking alternatives at the top of that list.

Not sure why you didn't see toilet paper, but it is right here: https://popgot.com/toilet-paper

I always kind of felt like it would be great to compare all kinds of toilet paper (soft, not soft, 1- 2- 3-ply etc) together based on weight. I feel like I use a lot fewer sheets of thicker toilet paper. So if I could see which was cheapest per gram or something I’d be pretty interested.

Interesting idea. Running the LLMs would be expensive. How are you monetising this product? Additionally, since the product is targeted towards frugal customers, do you think you will be able to generate a decent revenue from it?

The LLMs are in fact quite expensive! We run dozen of LLM calls across thousands of products. That's thousands to tens of thousands of calls per search query. The idea is we've got to find the best & the cheapest, and I have spared no expense in doing so. (Plus we have GCP credits.)

Eventually products will overlap between search queries, so we can serve fast and low latency results that have been pre-processed by LLMs. That will be near zero cost. And of course LLM prices will continue to drop quickly.

We monetize via affiliate fees -- you buy something off that list, and we get 1-4% back at no cost to you.

with AR and glasses camera platforms, this will actually be a big deal. pricing and real consumer interest and inventory levels are competitive.

If people are wearing AR glasses into big box stores that are comparing prices in real time, I could see there being a real time auction for CPG pricing the way there are for website ads now.

haha this is fun. shared with my partner.. he spends hours doing it manually

thanks! let me know if y'all have any feedback :)

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