Last year I almost paid $189 for a Dutch oven that was sitting on another site for $112. Same brand, same color, same size. I caught it with 30 seconds to spare because I had the right browser extension open. It wasn't luck. These days I run through the same short checklist before buying anything online that costs more than about $20, and it has saved me hundreds of dollars this year alone.
None of these apps costs anything. Most are browser extensions you install once and then forget about, at least until they pop up at checkout and quietly knock $30 off your order. A couple require you to remember to open them before you shop. The payoff is real either way.
Here are the 7 I actually use.
Rakuten
Rakuten is the one I wish I had started using years earlier. It works as a browser extension and a mobile app, and it gives you a percentage of your purchase price back as cash every time you shop through it at one of its 3,500+ partner stores. We're talking Target, Macy's, Sephora, Nike, GameStop, Ulta, and hundreds more. The cashback percentage varies by store and changes regularly, but it adds up fast when you're doing holiday shopping or buying something big like furniture or electronics.
The browser extension handles most of it automatically. When you land on a partner site, a notification pops up and activates the cashback. You shop exactly as you normally would, and the money accumulates in your Rakuten account. Payouts happen quarterly, either via PayPal or a mailed check. You can also convert your earnings into American Express Membership Rewards points, which is a nice option if you're trying to stack travel rewards.
Rakuten doesn't pay out weekly, and Amazon isn't a partner store, which are the two main downsides. But for everything else, it's the closest thing to free money I've found. One reviewer tracked 26 separate transactions over two years and walked away with $240 in cash back without doing anything unusual. New members who spend $30 within 90 days typically get a welcome bonus on top of that.
Capital One Shopping
Capital One Shopping is the extension that does the most heavy lifting at checkout. You don't need a Capital One account to use it. Once it's installed, it sits in your browser toolbar and springs into action when you're about to pay for something. It pulls in coupon codes from its database, tests them all, and applies whichever one saves you the most. It also checks whether the item you're buying is available for less at a competing retailer, and flags the difference in a pop-up before you finalize your order.
The price comparison piece is genuinely useful. If you're on the Target website about to buy a blender, Capital One Shopping will tell you if that exact blender is cheaper at Walmart or Home Depot right now, factoring in shipping. It covers over 30,000 retailers and tracks price history so you can see whether the “sale” price you're looking at is actually a sale or just the normal price with a crossed-out number.
Rewards come in the form of store credits redeemable for gift cards, not cash, which puts it a notch below Rakuten for payouts. But for coupon-finding and live price comparison, it's the best free tool I've used. It works on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, and there's a mobile app for iOS and Android.
CamelCamelCamel
Amazon's prices move constantly. A TV that's listed at $399 today might have sold for $299 three weeks ago and may drop again before the holidays. CamelCamelCamel tracks that history for millions of Amazon products and makes it available for free. You paste an Amazon product URL into the CamelCamelCamel website, and it shows you a price chart going back months or years, with the all-time high, the all-time low, and the average.
The browser extension, called The Camelizer, is even more convenient. Install it on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, and it adds a price history chart directly to any Amazon product page without making you leave the site. You can also set a price watch: tell it what you'd be willing to pay, and it emails you the moment the price hits that number. I use this for anything over $100 that I'm not in a rush to buy. The patience usually pays off.
CamelCamelCamel is Amazon-only, which limits its usefulness if you shop widely. But if you buy from Amazon regularly, it's one of the most important tools on this list. Knowing that a product's “lowest ever” price is $40 less than what's showing today takes about ten seconds to check and can save you real money if you're willing to wait.
Slickdeals
Slickdeals is a community of over 12 million people whose entire hobby is finding deals and sharing them with strangers. Members post discounts, coupon codes, and price drops as they find them across thousands of retailers. Other members vote on those deals, and the best ones surface to the front page. Since 1999, the platform claims its community has collectively saved shoppers more than $10 billion. The math seems plausible when you see what people unearth, including clearance pricing errors, stacking opportunities, and limited-window flash sales that would never show up in a Google search.
The feature that makes Slickdeals genuinely useful rather than just a rabbit hole for bargain hunters is the Deal Alert system. You type in a product name or category, set your criteria, and Slickdeals notifies you the moment a matching deal is posted, by email, push notification, or both. I have one set for a specific brand of coffee I buy regularly. The last time it triggered, the deal was gone within a few hours. Without the alert, I would have missed it entirely.
The app has a bit of a learning curve and can feel overwhelming at first because there's so much happening at once. Start with the Deal Alerts feature and ignore everything else until you're comfortable with how it works. That one tool alone is worth installing the app for.
CNET Shopping
CNET Shopping is a browser extension that does one thing simply and well: it tells you when an item you're looking at online is available for less somewhere else. It works across thousands of retail sites and covers a wider range of purchase categories than most price-comparison tools, including flights, hotels, and rental cars in addition to physical products. Install it on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari, and it quietly checks prices in the background as you shop, surfacing a banner when it finds a better deal.
Where CNET Shopping stands out is in its retailer coverage and the fact that it's not primarily a cashback app trying to earn affiliate commissions. Its job is specifically to compare prices and surface the lowest available, which means it has less of an incentive to steer you toward a particular retailer. You can get the extension at CNET's site and have it running in under two minutes.
It pairs well with Capital One Shopping rather than replacing it. CNET Shopping is better at broad cross-site comparisons; Capital One Shopping is better at coupon application and rewards. Running both at the same time creates occasional conflicts when both try to pop up at checkout, but usually they don't step on each other badly enough to cause problems.
Ibotta
Ibotta gives you cashback on specific products rather than specific stores, which makes it function differently from everything else on this list. Instead of getting a percentage back on everything you buy at a given retailer, you browse Ibotta's available offers, activate the ones you want, make your purchase at a participating store or online, and then get the cash deposited into your Ibotta account. Offers are typically on brand-name grocery and household products, like $1.50 back on a specific yogurt, or $3 back on a specific paper product brand.
It works online at Walmart, Target, and a growing list of other retailers where you can link your account and get credit automatically. It also works in-store if you submit your receipt through the app. The Ibotta website has a browser extension for desktop shopping that activates offers automatically at participating stores, which removes the step of remembering to check the app first. Minimum cashout threshold is $20, after which you can transfer to PayPal, Venmo, or gift cards.
Ibotta and Rakuten can be stacked at some retailers, which is where the savings get interesting. If Rakuten is offering 3% cashback at Walmart and Ibotta has a $2 offer on a specific item you were already buying, both can apply to the same order. Not every combination works this cleanly, but it's worth checking both before a large grocery order or a household supply run.
Honey
Honey used to be the first app anyone recommended for online savings, and for years it genuinely was worth having. The PayPal-owned browser extension automatically tests coupon codes at checkout on 30,000+ sites and applies whichever one saves you the most. It also tracks price history on Amazon and lets you set up a “Droplist” for products you're monitoring. On pure functionality, it still works at a basic level.
The problem is what came out in late 2024. A widely viewed investigation revealed that Honey was doing two things users didn't know about: replacing affiliate links from creators and websites with its own at checkout, meaning it was pocketing referral commissions it hadn't earned, and working with some retailers to suppress better coupon codes in favor of ones the retailer preferred users to see. By the end of 2025, Honey had lost roughly 8 million Chrome users. PayPal acknowledged one of the code issues in January 2026 and said it had been disabled.
I'm listing it here because it's still widely installed and still does find valid coupon codes at checkout. But I'd use Capital One Shopping for coupon application instead, and CamelCamelCamel for Amazon price history. Honey's advantages over those two have narrowed considerably, and the trust issue is real. If you already have it installed and aren't ready to uninstall, just know what you're working with.
