How GearChase Compares Prices

GearChase lists products from more than 950 stores. Almost all of them work with us through two affiliate networks, AvantLink and Impact. Each store publishes a product feed: a file with its products, prices, stock status, images and links. We import those feeds. Some stores run on Shopify, and for those we read the product list the store itself publishes. Amazon appears only occasionally, in deals picked by hand and linked through the Amazon Associates program.

We store the values exactly as each store sent them. When we tidy something up, like a product's category or which sizes belong together, we keep that in separate fields, so the store's own data is never overwritten.

We list only stores we have an active partnership with. When a store leaves its affiliate program, its products come off GearChase.

• Weekly imports. Each network's feeds are imported once a week. A store whose feed hasn't changed is skipped, but every store is re-imported at least every four weeks.
• Feeds lag. Stores update their feeds on their own schedule, sometimes a day or more after a sale starts or ends. A price on GearChase can be out of date, which is why every "View deal" or "Check price" button takes you to the store's page, where the price you pay is shown.
• Prices older than a month show "Price last checked {date}" instead of a sale price, discount or "In stock" label.
• Prices older than six months are left out of deal pages altogether. The product page stays up, so links to it keep working.
• Removed products. When a product leaves a store's feed, we wait for two more imports before treating it as gone, because feeds sometimes drop items by mistake. Its page then says it's no longer listed and links to the store.

Each product page is one store's listing: its price, stock status and link. For many stores we group a product's sizes and colors onto one page instead of a separate page for each size.

The same item is often sold by several stores, but most feeds don't include the barcodes (UPC/GTIN) needed to match them reliably. We'd rather not show a wrong match as "the same item, cheaper", so a product page doesn't claim to be the lowest price anywhere. Similar items, more from the brand and more from the store are listed below it, so you can compare yourself.

Price history on a product page shows the prices we've recorded from that store's feed over time. It starts when we began recording that product, so a short chart just means a short record.

Stores that share a parent company (for example Backcountry.com and Competitive Cyclist) are listed separately, each with its own products and prices.

The deals pages get new deals every day. Each one goes through the same steps:

1. Candidates from the feeds. In stock, 25% to 75% off, a regular price of at least $25, a working image and link, and a brand with a real catalog (at least 30 products). Discounts above 75% are skipped because they're more often feed errors than real sales.
2. Spread across stores and brands. We sample by store, so a few very large stores don't crowd out the rest, and we post at most one deal per brand in a short window.
3. Checked on the store's own page. Software opens the product on the store's website and reads the price, stock and image there. If the store shows a different price, we use the store's price. If the item is out of stock, or the discount falls below 25%, the deal isn't posted.
4. Short-lived. An automatically posted deal shows for at most 72 hours, then comes off the deals pages.

Whether a product is popular is judged from the store's own page (ratings, review counts), never from how much commission it pays. Deals are posted automatically once they pass these checks; we spot-check them and remove any that turn out wrong. Amazon deals are the exception: those are picked by hand.

• Store-wide sales, coupon codes and free-shipping offers on our offers pages come from the affiliate networks' offer lists and from the newsletters stores send to their affiliate partners.
• Offers read from newsletters are checked and approved by a person before they appear.
• We publish only codes a store issues for affiliates to share. Never personal, single-use, member-only or app-only codes, and never a code marked exclusive to another site.
• Every offer belongs to a store we currently partner with. Offers come off when they end; an offer with no end date comes off after 45 days without being seen again.

• The gift guide is picked by a person. Software suggests candidates from products that are in stock and that GearChase shoppers have clicked on or bought; a person chooses, orders and approves every pick.
• Each pick's "why it's a good gift" line is drafted with AI from the store's product information, then read and edited by a person before it appears.
• A pick is hidden automatically if it sells out, leaves the store's feed, its price hasn't been checked in the last month, or the store is no longer a partner. Each card shows the price and the date it was checked, never a discount or "lowest price" claim.
• No store or brand has paid to be in the gift guide. If that changes, paid picks will be labelled "Sponsored".

Product data is messy. When we aren't sure, we leave the claim out instead of guessing:

• No "% off", sale price or "In stock" label on a price last checked over a month ago.
• No "lowest price" claim across stores.
• No deal that wasn't checked on the store's page when it was posted.
• No countdown timers or "only 2 left" messages.

When you click through to a store and buy something, the store may pay us a commission. You pay the same price either way. Commission rates aren't used to choose which deals are posted or to rank products: product lists are sorted by the order you pick, newest first by default. Read the full affiliate disclosure and our editorial policy, which covers how we use AI.