You find a TV marked at $699, crossed out from $999. But what if the TV was $699 for the last three months, briefly bumped to $999 for two days, and is now "on sale" back at its normal price? Without price history, you'd never know.
What Price History Reveals
It reveals the real price — many products have MSRPs nobody pays. It reveals pricing cycles — a Dyson vacuum might drop $100 every three months. It reveals trends — products get cheaper over their lifecycle. And most valuably, it reveals the floor price — the absolute lowest a product has ever been, which becomes your target.
The Data Moat
Price history creates genuine competitive advantage over time. A tracker that started recording in 2020 has six years of context that can never be replicated. Historical data is irreplaceable — you can't go back and record prices that already happened.
This is why we started recording prices at Deal.fo from day one. The database we're building becomes more valuable with every day of data we add. Within a year, we'll show not just that today's price is the lowest in 30 days, but how it compares to six months of actual pricing data.
Using Price History as a Buyer
Before any purchase over $50, check price history. If a product is at or near its historic low, that's a strong buy signal. If it's been lower recently, the current "deal" is less impressive. The goal isn't to always get the absolute lowest price — it's to never overpay because you didn't know the context.