Methodology & data sources

GeizR retrieves the prices of a product from the markets as soon as you search for it, works out for every offer the price a buyer in Germany pays, and sorts the offers by final price including estimated shipping costs.

Which markets are compared

Amazon Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in each case Amazon itself and Marketplace sellers.
eBay (eBay.de), Buy It Now offers with shipping costs to a German delivery address.
German shops via the price data of billiger.de and Adindex, as well as MediaMarkt and Saturn.

GeizR shows live prices from some Amazon markets in other EU countries only with a free account.

When prices are retrieved

Prices are retrieved live from the sources when you search (live retrieval). So that the same request does not keep burdening the sources, GeizR remembers the answers for a while: Amazon prices for up to 2 hours, prices of German shops for up to one hour, eBay prices for up to 4 hours. What counts is always the price on the seller’s page at the time of purchase.

How the German price is calculated

The German price is the price a buyer in Germany pays without shipping. How GeizR works it out depends on who is selling:

Amazon Germany: the displayed price is already the German price.
Amazon itself as the seller in another EU country: for delivery to Germany, Amazon charges German VAT. GeizR therefore removes the VAT of the country of origin from the price and adds 19% German VAT.
All other sellers (Marketplace sellers abroad, eBay sellers): GeizR assumes that they charge the VAT of their country and takes their price as the German price.

VAT rates used: Germany 19%, France 20%, Italy 22%, Spain 21%.

Shipping costs and final price

The final price is the German price plus the shipping costs to Germany. For Amazon, GeizR assumes estimated shipping costs per marketplace: €0.00 for Amazon Germany and €5.04 for Amazon France, Italy and Spain. Marketplace sellers may charge more; Amazon gives no information on this. For eBay and the German shops, the shipping costs come from the offers themselves. The offers are sorted by final price. If you hide shipping costs in the price search, the offers are sorted by German price.

Currencies

GeizR converts prices in other currencies, for example from eBay sellers outside the euro area, into euros using the reference rates of the European Central Bank. The rates are retrieved every 4 hours at most.

What GeizR does not take into account

Customs duty and import VAT when a seller ships from a country outside the EU.
Return shipping costs, if you send an item back.