[HN Gopher] Geizhals - Tech Product Price Comparison and Tracking
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Geizhals - Tech Product Price Comparison and Tracking
Author : schleck8
Score : 253 points
Date : 2021-09-11 09:43 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (geizhals.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (geizhals.eu)
| k__ wrote:
| I use their service since 2003, I think.
|
| Usually they list the best offers, and if not it's at least a
| good starting point.
| AegirLeet wrote:
| Love that site. The filters are amazing.
| tarr11 wrote:
| Surprised to see rtx 3080s.
|
| Where are people buying RTX 3080 graphics cards these days? All
| the prices I see (USA) are either 2500+ or out of stock.
| Tenoke wrote:
| For what is worth, when I got my 3070 earlier this year this
| gpu-specific site[0] was even more helpful than geizhals as
| they'd only list a couple at a time at okay prices and this
| seemed to update quicker.
|
| Checking it now there are no 3080s actually avaible.
|
| 0. https://www.gputracker.eu/en
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Build quite a few computers in the past based on their useful
| wishlist feature.
|
| You can aggregate the parts you need and then find the best
| offers for all parts within a single shipment, or shipments from
| different sellers when something is unavailable or cheaper
| elsewhere.
|
| Not sure about the UX though, it's nice to use if you more or
| less know what you want and need, to find the cheapest thing
| within a category or based on required specs and features.
| hesk wrote:
| How does geizhals compare to idealo?
| lazyjones wrote:
| Geizhals is much older, was mostly focused on IT/electronics
| for many years and is thus strongest in these categories.
| Idealo is broader (due to its much larger team/company) but
| sometimes lacking detail where Geizhals is good, and vice-
| versa. Geizhals also covers the Austrian market better while
| Idealo is stronger in Germany.
| hesk wrote:
| Thanks!
| lazyjones wrote:
| Funny that this is trending for the first time on HN after all
| these years.
|
| FWIW, I was the original founder and developer. This started as a
| Perl script crawling 8 local merchants' price lists and writing a
| single HTML file (some time in 1997), then turned into a CGI
| script reading flat text files (i.e. no database), then into a
| mod_perl handler. No complete rewrites at least until 2014 when I
| left the company. Perl got really unwieldy at some point, would
| not recommend (and my code was universally hated I guess).
|
| By the way, geizhals.at (the original domain) was in the top 2000
| Alexa websites for a few years (somewhere around the years
| 2000-2004) AFAIR despite being from a very small country.
| schleck8 wrote:
| thanks for the insights!
| jahnu wrote:
| I guess those first merchants included Academia and... I think
| one out Hietzing if I remember correctly.
|
| Still one of the best sites on the internet. Kudos!
| lazyjones wrote:
| I don't remember all 8, but NRE, Krob, Plug, Birg, Actron,
| Academia were among them AFAIR. The earliest archive.org has
| proof for can be seen in the dropdown here: https://web.archi
| ve.org/web/19990508145612/http://www.geizha...
| onede wrote:
| my secret tip is schottenland.de respectively hardwareschotte.de
| they're on the market for a long time as well, they do have many
| many filters. kind of an underdog with much expertise.
| schleck8 wrote:
| thanks for the tip, looks good
| codethief wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know this site still existed! I seem to remember
| that ~15 years ago it regularly showed up in Google search
| results but it doesn't anymore. I'm wondering what happened - did
| they stop spending a ton of money on Adwords?
| vmp wrote:
| I made a web-extension to add PassMark benchmark results to
| processors and mainboards with embedded CPUs to allow you to
| compare the best price per performance:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sharkys-geizh...
|
| It really helped me make some decent budget builds.
|
| Tried to publish it to the chrome extension store as well but
| they removed it. Honestly just use Firefox, google is garbage.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I really like Geizhals. It provides a way better UX than Amazon
| for browsing computer hardware and other electronics.
|
| My only gripe with it is how many stores only sell to Germany,
| Austria and Switzerland. I know that it's not geizhals' fault.
| Because of this, it's mostly an improved way to search Amazon for
| me.
|
| It's a bit funny that if I were in a richer country, where people
| are paid more, the price of commuter hardware would be cheaper.
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's pretty amazing. I think they could be much more popular with
| a little advertising and a bit of restyling.
| fklp120 wrote:
| Restyling does not improve the site in most cases. This UI is
| functional and works. Also, it gets way less on my nerves than
| the uniform flat style glitzy nonsense.
|
| chess24.com is another example. A traditional UI that appears
| quirky in the beginning but is superior once you get used to
| it.
|
| Many restylings replace something individual and special with
| bland uniformity. Just Like TV makeover shows.
| oezi wrote:
| Lifehack: If you visit a store from Geizhals you get a better
| price in many cases than if you browse the store directly.
| moepstar wrote:
| Can you share an example where that is the case?
|
| From what i figured in the past, _they want you to believe that
| is the case_ as they earn their affiliate commission from you
| clicking through - however, years of ordering hardware
| _especially_ avoiding to click and going the "extra mile" of
| going manually to the respective website and searching for the
| product there yielded exactly the same price as advertised on
| Geizhals.
| caeruleus wrote:
| One shop that I noticed was doing this is csv-direct.de.
| First visit a product page, e. g.:
|
| https://www.csv-
| direct.de/artinfo.php?artnr=AGX1428619&KATEG... (758,93EUR)
|
| then look at the geizhals price:
|
| https://geizhals.de/ubiquiti-unifiswitch-
| enterprise-24-rackm... (748,09EUR)
|
| After you have visited the page from geizhals, the lower
| price will stay even on direct links, for that product only
| (until you clear local data/cookies).
| moepstar wrote:
| That's interesting and you're right. Never happend upon
| this behavior until now.
|
| Incidentally, i've bought RAM from CSV-direct sometime last
| year, after getting an alert from Geizhals... not sure if i
| clicked through with the link from the email, the price
| however did match...
| caeruleus wrote:
| Haha, actually the reason I noticed was because I was
| shopping for RAM at the beginning of this year. The
| product above was just my first random thought, it seems
| to be very regular there.
|
| FWIW, it's enough to just set the parameter _&
| pva=geizhals2_ in the GET request for the product page
| once. Could be fun to see how regular it is.
| oezi wrote:
| I realized with Bueromarkt Boettcher, because with them the
| price delta for some office supplies like printer toner is
| quite huge.
|
| https://www.bueromarkt-ag.de/
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have experienced this a large number of times, that when
| coming from geizhals or from a few other price comparison
| sites I got a better price, some times even close to 10%, on
| various online shops for computer components.
|
| For example a shop where I have seen this almost always was
| jacob.de.
|
| However, I have not bought many computer parts during the
| last year, so I do not know if this still happens today.
|
| A couple of years ago, it was certainly very frequent.
| purerandomness wrote:
| It's a common tactic for affiliate price comparison/aggregation
| sites, like pharmacy aggregators, also do that.
| corty wrote:
| From their job offers page for a sysadmin/devops position:
|
| > Angaben gemass GlBG: Das KV-Mindestgrundgehalt fur diese
| Position betragt EUR 3,501 brutto monatlich (IT-Kollektivvertrag
| 2021, ST1 Erfahrungsstufe, Vollzeit = 38,5h), es besteht die
| Bereitschaft zur Uberzahlung.
|
| Seems they are even more stingy than their customers...
| ginko wrote:
| It's an Austrian law thing. They have to list a salary so
| essentially all job offers show the legal Kollektivvertrag
| minimum salary which is obviously way too little. They then add
| "es besteht die Bereitschaft zur Uberzahlung" saying they're
| willing to pay more than that.
|
| So essentially just ignore the salaries in Austrian job offers.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, how do typical 'real' dev salaries in
| Austria compare to KV values? What is a reasonable
| expectation for Junior, Senior, etc.?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| In actual IT companies entry salaries for a developer these
| days is around 70k.
| bootloop wrote:
| Any number mentioned is going to be wrong. It heavily
| depends on the area the business is operating in, the size
| of the company, the work you have to do and the location
| you are based (Vienna/city vs country side).
|
| Vienna is very competitive so salery can exceed KV quite a
| bit. Even for entry positions. On the country side it will
| depend but usually not much more. But costs of living
| (especially housing) are also lower.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Minimum salaries have to be quoted by law in Austria. Actual
| salaries are not disclosed. We're also only quoting the legal
| minimum we have to.
| hrnn wrote:
| Seems based in Austria (surprised to see it here, I thought it
| was local only).
|
| Minimum salary as per collective agreement must be displayed on
| the job listing, but for skilled workers it's a mere reference.
| I asked 40% more than what was advertised for my current job
| and got it.
| invalidusernam3 wrote:
| Also doesn't Austria do do that thing where employees get
| paid 14 times a year instead of the normal 12?
| gehatare wrote:
| Yes, you get the monthly salary 14 times, the last two are
| taxed at lower rates.
| [deleted]
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Yup, you certainly can argue for more...
| c0l0 wrote:
| I used to work there as Senior Sysadmin for several years. My
| pay was competitive with most offerings the Austrian IT market
| can be brought to bear.
| boshomi wrote:
| "Mad Wuzzler Skills" required? (Wuzzler means table soccer in
| Austria.)
| c0l0 wrote:
| We had great wuzzler culture there (with a former semi-pro
| on the tech team back then), which eventually prompted me
| to ask them to introduce that "requirement"/nice-to-have to
| the job ads. Nice to see they still list it! ;)
| 4ad wrote:
| That being said, competitive for Austria is low even compared
| to western Europe, and of course unfathomably lower than the
| US.
| m3nu wrote:
| Is there something comparable for the US market? I sometimes drop
| ship hard drives to my colo partners, but didn't find good
| comparison sites.
| schleck8 wrote:
| someone said PCPartpicker
| schleck8 wrote:
| This and Idealo are what I use to track prices for products I
| don't need urgently, like harddrives, to get notified when the
| overall market price drops or a sale goes live
|
| what i find really interesting is the 'search subscription' where
| you can filter products to your liking and then track the search
| as a whole. i only discovered that today so we'll see how it
| goes. the filters worked well for sure
| moepstar wrote:
| It works pretty well from my experience, however the following
| caveats apply:
|
| - maximum reminder period is 6 months
|
| - if your price target is not met, no reminder
|
| - no, not even if your reminder period is up - no reminder to
| prolong
|
| - i'd say about 30-50% of the time, if you happen to read the
| mail hours later, the price is already up again
|
| Aside from potentially getting good deals it also saves one
| from impulse buys and sometimes i even got a surprise reminder
| i completely forgot setting..
| arendtio wrote:
| I like their index, as it helps me to find alternative products,
| but aside from tech products is isn't as complete as I would like
| to have it.
|
| Do you know of any similar pages, maybe for the US or other
| countries?
| esel2k wrote:
| For Switzerland I go to http://www.toppreise.ch
|
| Edited: Url to be clickable
| schleck8 wrote:
| idealo is similar (available in italy, france and spain
| additionally to DACH), someone mentioned kakaku for japan
| bjornsing wrote:
| Prisjakt[1] is the Scandinavian version I guess.
|
| 1. https://prisjakt.nu https://prisjakt.no
| https://pricespy.co.uk etc
| TicklishTiger wrote:
| There is Product Chart [1], a site by a HN user.
|
| But I think it has the focus more on the user interface than on
| a broad product index.
|
| [1] https://www.productchart.com
| ysleepy wrote:
| My main shopping site. Proof that UX and "pretty" aren't always
| the same, this page has the best experience by a mile.
|
| You know there is a lot of optimization in the background for all
| the faceting and search, I'd be really interested how they
| implemented that.
|
| A lot of the value also comes from meticulously integrating shop
| product datasets either by scraping or cooperating, combining
| offers etc.
|
| Disruptive by putting in the hard work and keeping at it.
| longstation wrote:
| Does any one know if there's a North American equivalent?
| lazyjones wrote:
| pricewatch.com was the original inspiration for this website
| and pricegrabber.com was (apparently until some years ago) a
| close equivalent for many years.
|
| Both have changed dramatically though.
| bildung wrote:
| A really wonderful site, great filters, great price tracking. The
| only thing I'd wish for would be the ability to exclude all those
| amazon.com shops from the results (everyone from amazons
| marketplace seems to be listed as a distinct shop there).
| Tepix wrote:
| I agree, they are fantastic and i've used them for the last 16
| years or so. Their product database is unmatched and many of my
| suggestions have been kindly accepted and implemented.
|
| The only feature that's missing is a toggle that will show you
| all their products in the product database including those with
| no offers. Right now you will only find them when you search
| for their names but you can't list all 5k (5120x2880) monitors
| for example, only the very few models that are still being sold
| today.
| franze wrote:
| Yeah, main office is in Vienna and they are the major Perl
| employers in this area. Perl, all the way down. Also the CTO was
| the first one who brought webperformance (meetups) into our
| community 10+ years ago.
| softgrow wrote:
| Looks pretty much like a clone of https://kakaku.com (Japanese
| language). Doesn't seem to have the nice price history graphs or
| the multi factor ratings. Compare 2.5" SSD
| https://kakaku.com/pc/ssd/itemlist.aspx?pdf_Spec102=2&lid=20...
| vs https://geizhals.eu/?cat=hdssd&xf=4832_1~4836_2
| schleck8 wrote:
| 1. It does have a pricy history, including markers for events
| like black friday, the first and last price as well as the
| median
|
| 2. You can sort the geizhals results by user ratings and it
| also displays review scores on the desktop version/mobile
| details page
|
| 3. Kakaku was established a year after Geizhals, according to
| their wiki entries and domain registry
| ysleepy wrote:
| Geizhals is at it since 1997 and tables with a product image at
| the left is hardly something distinguishing.
| mqus wrote:
| I always go there not only when I need a cheap vendor, but
| especially when I don't know exactly what exists on the market
| because they have such a superior index and filter for finding
| the product you search for.
|
| Especially Amazon is exceptionally bad, Even if I sort by price
| it isn't guaranteed they really show them in order and even if
| they do, the filters/search terms are often so broad that sorting
| from cheap to expensive just shows 100 pages of crap first.
|
| Idealo is somewhat fine in terms of capabilities but I think the
| geizhals UI is far superior.
| ganomi wrote:
| I usually do that as well. But sometimes the properties of a
| product are not maintained correctly and you might miss out on
| certain manufacturers completely. Last time this happened to me
| was when looking for a new TV. Sony was completely filtered out
| although some of their TVs had all the features i was looking
| for.
|
| TLDR: The (wrong) filter settings might make you blind for the
| whole range of the market.
| brnt wrote:
| I use a local equivalent (Tweakers Pricewatch). I've been using
| this since what feels like the late 90ies, and like you, I
| never quite saw the appeal of Amazon. I've been buying online
| since the 90ies, and that experience is still the same. Amazon,
| or any other 'marketplace', has not improved on that. Their
| selection is of course wider, but it's just unpleasant and a
| huge time sink every time. But even that a local competitor
| (bol.com) does better.
| smartbit wrote:
| GH is a different realm than tweakers.net, the number of many
| product attributes GH tracks and allow you to filter for is
| 10 fold of Tweakers.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Any vendors who start selling Chinese stuff, is part of deal to
| not allow excluding items from search results?
|
| Amazon do not have any options to excludes items that ship from
| China. https://daraz.pk, largest online shopping store in
| Pakistan bought by AliBaba recently, has done the same. There
| is only one checkbox named China to show only Chinese items but
| there is absolutely no way to exclude items shipping from
| China.
| nsajko wrote:
| Doubtful, as Aliexpress does allow something like that (last
| time I checked).
| sdze wrote:
| Plus GH does not nag you about being a robot and please solve
| captchas like crazy when I am behind corporate VPN...
| mlang23 wrote:
| Hehe, this sites exists since, well, a loooong time. I typically
| use it as a directory, to know whats available in a certain
| category. But I really wonder how this site made it onto the
| frontpage. This is a bit like posting "amazon.com" :-)
| marban wrote:
| Got downflamed for stating this below so you have my + ;)
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I guess it's popular because people outside of Germany didn't
| know there is a better product search than amazon.com. And if
| we honestly compare the two, Geizhals beats Amazon in almost
| every regard, from better filters to less tracking...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Pretty much anything is better than Amazon's search.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| While that can be good for getting an overview of what's
| available on the market, it can also lead to frustration.
|
| For instance searching for RAM, mainboard, etc., then going to
| the site of the product just to discover there is already a new,
|
| (supposedly) better edition available, but nobody is stocking
| that, or willing to do so.
|
| Depending on your view it gives a distorted view of what _is_
| available, compared to what could be available.
|
| Imagine they'd get their list directly from the OEMs, and show
| how lagging the merchants are.
|
| Like a visualization of the supply-chain, the capacity of the
| _channel_ , and how lagging and incomplete the merchants are.
|
| Like a diff-view between what is available at the source, how it
| moves into the _channel(s)_ , an when it is available for you (if
| at all!)
|
| I guess it depends on what is being tested by the countless
| hardware review sites, and what's known to the people.
|
| Whereas I, scroogy as usual, from time to time have to source
| several dozen to about a hundred low-end systems,
|
| and prefer to get stuff from the "also runs" like
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitegroup_Computer_Systems
| [...] https://www.ecs.com.tw/en
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biostar [...]
| https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_Elektronik [...]
| https://www.goodram.com/en/
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcend_Information [...]
| https://transcend-info.com/
|
| to run some form of Linux or BSD on it, for light office or
| remote desktop use.
|
| Ghastly BIOS? Doesn't matter, is only used once during initial
| setup, and then after updates, if necessary.
|
| No gaming _Bling-Bling_? Matters even _less_ , since it has no
| useful function and is disabled, if it's there at all.
|
| Bad VRMs or cooling of these? Does it matter when I don't
| overclock?
|
| I'm doing this since about 15 years this way, and had no stress
| with this choices, at all.
|
| All I did was checking the installation manual pdf of the
| mainboard for fan connectors, and choose them accordingly.
|
| I'm too old-fashioned, I guess?
|
| Anyway, enough of a rant.
|
| Geizhals is the best we have, but it could be much better!
|
| And thumbs-up for no-frills look&feel without dumbing it down!
| marban wrote:
| Why is this HN-worthy? It's been around since the late 90s and
| not only for tech stuff but down to a box of cereal bars.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| How is it not HN worthy? A review of the comments indicates
| some love and appreciation for a company apparently doing many
| things right. The implication brings contrast to Amazon and
| others. It's a case study. I think it's _exactly_ what belongs
| here.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I use them for tech parts but hadn't even occured to me to
| check for things like that there. Ironically your comment
| asking how this is HN-worthy is what's making this submission
| useful for me.
| MandieD wrote:
| Despite living in Germany these past 15+ years, I was barely
| aware of them...
| lamnk wrote:
| Could be. As far as i can tell they do not market themselves,
| word of mouth only work so far within their (German?) tech
| savvy audience. I was a student in Germany since 2003 and use
| Geizhals extensively for purchasing stuff, especially
| computer related stuff. Other price comparison engines like
| Idealo, Kelkoo etc. suck in compare to Geizhals.
| Borrible wrote:
| I guess, because of 50 Karmapoints and 25 comments in about two
| hours.
|
| It seems to please the interest of the HN crowd, which is
| conform to HN guidelines.
|
| The interesting question for me is, why does it please it...
| C19is20 wrote:
| New to me, and interesting from a ui, dnt angle. I wish id
| known about it years ago....
| HippoBaro wrote:
| I've been using this for years and it's been extremely useful.
| The feature to plot the prices over time is great to gauge
| whether it's a good time to buy something or if you'd rather
| wait.
| jh00ker wrote:
| https://www.camelcamelcamel.com works really well against Amazon
| products. There is also a 3rd-party tracking component, but it
| seems to mainly focus on Amazon prices.
| Fnoord wrote:
| A very good (and proven/old) price comparison tracker from before
| Web 2.0. I find it a bit cumbersome to figure shops who deliver
| to my country (NL) but if you're in German-speaking Europe this
| is AFAIK (still) the go-to. In The Netherlands, we got Tweakers
| Pricewatch.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| The website respects DNT and informs the user with a small popup
| that disappears automatically. What a joy! The web could be such
| a nice place if it was like this everywhere.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Geizhals is basically the opposite of modern advertising:
| Provides a very useful service to the customer but only costs the
| advertising party something for successful conversions. And it
| basically does not need any tracking beyond the outbound links
| associating a transaction with them.
| reirob wrote:
| Finally a website where i can filter for criteria I need, down to
| stuff like keyboard without number block, with Trackpoint (on the
| site it's called pointing stick). No other site i know does this,
| not even the vendors themselves.
| forrestgumbc wrote:
| We're building something similar for ANY product at
| www.chestr.app
|
| Our beta just opened so feel free to check it out :)
|
| [We also just applied to YC W22 so fingers crossed!]
| schleck8 wrote:
| you definitely need a privacy policy for what the extension
| does
|
| going to www.chestr.app doesn't work, only chestr.app does
| mqus wrote:
| similar? no.
|
| At its base, geizhals is a database where much effort went into
| data quality. Chestr seems(to me) to be another social media
| site but focused on shopping.
|
| Simple comparison (from the demo video): GH/Chestr Comparing
| prices:yes/no Filtering/sorting for a multitude of
| attributes:yes/no Social component:no(at most a
| rating/review)/yes Needs an account:no/yes Focusing on
| information over feelings:yes/no manually maintained
| entries:yes(at least I assume so, no one comes close)/no
| Getting a handle on everything that exists for a type of
| product:yes/no Inclusion of past prices:yes/no
|
| To me, chestr is basically worthless. I don't care what others
| bought when I'm searching for something. What fits for them
| doesn't have to fit for me. I'm not starting from a specific
| shopping site but from the products itself, and then search for
| the perfect (price, reviews) shopping site.
|
| For that matter, this seems like a great site for influencers
| and their audience. I very much doubt that the data quality
| required for building something like geizhals can be achieved
| in a "hack it together" startup context.
| kevindong wrote:
| Seems like a EU-centric version of PCPartPicker but with a much
| broader array of products that it tracks.
|
| https://pcpartpicker.com
| rurban wrote:
| Proudly made with perl
| step21 wrote:
| You can also use them via heise.de/preisvergleich and thus also
| supporting good tech journalism.
| schleck8 wrote:
| they are part of the heise group, so heise profits either way i
| reckon
| 66fm472tjy7 wrote:
| One of their most impressive features is how many product
| attributes they track and allow you to filter for. E.g. for
| mainboards you can filter for support for all generations of
| Ryzen CPU + at least M.2 slots + BIOS flashback (allows you to do
| BIOS updates without a CPU or RAM) + at least one USB-C + built
| in IO shield + at least 12 VRM phases + WiFi 6 + in stock:
| https://geizhals.eu/?cat=mbam4&v=k&hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=pl&h...
| baybal2 wrote:
| In Russia, there is Yandex Market, they have almost the same,
| if not better granularity, and they don't use any scraping to
| generate product data -- all human filled
| GordonS wrote:
| This is something that drives me nuts about Amazon, who are a
| giant that has the resources to do it properly - but don't.
| Their filters are usually useless, filtering _out_ matching
| production, and _including_ products that don 't even match
| from their title.
| josefx wrote:
| Not sure if that is a problem with Amazons search or the
| product listings themselves. Last time I was looking for a
| motherboard on Amazon it seemed as if half couldn't decide
| whether they had an AMD or Intel CPU socket. The
| descriptions, technical details and serial numbers where all
| over the place. Apparently the process of putting up
| thousands of products on Amazon is fairly automated and there
| are exactly zero humans checking if the result makes any
| sense.
| n1000 wrote:
| My favourite feature is sorting by price per GB
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