How We Track Prices and Call Verdicts

Cheaplorer is a price-analysis site, not a product-rating publisher. Every product page rests on one habit: each night we record the lowest in-stock price for that exact model across the US stores we track, keep the record, and compare today against it. This page explains what that record can tell you and, just as important, what it cannot yet.

What we record every night

For each tracked product we log the price at every store that lists it new and in stock, along with the seller and condition. We match listings by manufacturer identifier so the comparison is like-for-like: the same unit at every store, never a refurbished tag quietly stacked against new ones. Prices shown on a page always come from that live data, refreshed nightly, never typed into the text by hand. If a store goes out of stock, it drops out of the day’s comparison until it returns.

When a verdict appears, and when it does not

A page can carry one of three plain verdicts: real deal, typical, or inflated. These are judgments about price legitimacy, never about product quality. We do not print any of them until the daily record is long enough to mean something, roughly a 90-day window. Until then the page says its history is still building and makes no fair-price claim. A low number today is only low against the other stores on the board that day, not against the model’s own past.

Some products never earn a verdict at all. If a model is sold only through marketplace sellers, with no manufacturer or major-retailer listing to anchor it, we describe the live store-to-store spread instead of ruling on it. That is honest: without a stable reference, a verdict would be a guess.

Why the daily low, not the sticker

Sticker prices and struck-through “was” prices are the easiest thing to fake, so we ignore them. A discount only counts if the price actually reaches a level the record shows is genuinely below typical. That is the whole point of keeping history: it separates a routine price wearing a sale banner from a real dip. When you see a real-deal verdict, it means today’s tracked low sits below where this model normally lands, based on our own logged data.

What this means when you shop

Read the live price table first, then the verdict if one exists. If the page is still building history, treat the current low as a store-to-store comparison, not a proven bargain, and check back as the record fills in. Either way you are choosing from every seller we can find for that model, side by side, which is the fastest way to avoid overpaying at the one store that happens to be highest.

For how seller type changes your terms, see first-party vs marketplace sellers. For what new, renewed, and refurbished labels mean, see condition tiers.