New Free Tool for Price Tracking Your Wanted Products from Aussie and International Retailers

AssociatedLchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:32

Moved to Forum: Original Link

I posted yesterday and received feedback from many educated people, which I take seriously and am thankful for.

I've made changes to the app and removed payments completely; it is now 100% FREE.

I know you'll say others already serve the same purpose. I know and have used them. To build this app, I spent many months on it. My app solves problems they don't address to MY needs. I've researched them all and can tell you who they are: camelcamelcamel, Grocerize, Honey, Price Hipster, etc. Would Hungry Jack stop what they're doing because McDonald's already exists? No.

Some of you will say "oh another VibeCode product." If that helps you - fine. I do use LLM to assist in making the frontend look good. Who doesn't use LLM nowadays? If you're a tech person, you know the frontend alone isn't enough. I take pride in my work with the backend and the cloud infrastructure required.

Anyway, constructive feedback is welcome, and again, the app is FREE. There is nowhere in the app where you can make payments.

Hope it helps you save on your purchases, from groceries to anything you need in this cost of living crisis. It's an Aussie-built app, not an American one. Made in Australia for Australians. If the public doesn't welcome it, I will make it private at the end of the day. Take it easy.

Free Software/Websites

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Comments

  • Jimothy Wongingtons on 21/05/2025 - 14:42

    Dunno hey - wish you all the best and all that - but how do you go from a subscription based service to free? Like are you looking to onboard everyone then reintroduce a subscriber tier - or just pump it full of ads?

    • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:46

      I will add donation links and hope for people kindness perhaps, I also have partnerships with retailers for commissions.

      • MS Paint on 21/05/2025 - 14:49
        +3

        Buy me a coffee works for me. I've done that a few times.

        • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 15:07

          thanks mate, will integrate it :)

      • geekcohen on 21/05/2025 - 14:52

        I will add donation links

        I added for some of my projects that were free and offering help/advice or some service/tool, and got nothing.

        I also have partnerships with retailers for commissions.

        Like Amazon? I've earned 0 in 6 months.

        and hope for people kindness perhaps

        It's nice to think about it, but the reality is, there aren't too many that will give any $.

        Not trying to be negative about your tool, but as someone who has tried and invested a fair bit of money into things with 0 return, just trying to provide some truth and a bit of a reality check.

        • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:58
          +1

          Yeah yesterday I posted with a 1-month voucher, for a $5 sub. Many attacked me. As a technical person, I'm more about sharing my app than making money, so it's fine. I've taken payment off. If running costs are no longer sustainable, I'll take it offline.

          • geekcohen on 21/05/2025 - 16:46

            @chickenbanana:

            I'm more about sharing my app than making money, so it's fine. I've taken payment off. If running costs are no longer sustainable, I'll take it offline.

            100%, I wanted to offer a great service tool and have something to help me get better prices. I wasn't in it to make money; I just wanted enough to at least cover costs, but it was getting pretty high.

            • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 17:00
              +1

              @geekcohen: Good on you mate. Yeah I have Auth0 reported that 80% quota for M2M token calls has already been reached this month after I shared the app publicly, so maybe my app will go private again pretty soon. I cannot afford to upgrade for bigger quota - no way if it is not subscription based, there are many other things to pay for. We are all saving geeks, but many go beyond that, being cheap and some even become rude.

              • bio on 21/05/2025 - 21:42

                @chickenbanana: Auth0 is very expensive. I suggest you to take a look at AuthKit which is another reputable IDaaS service and it is free up to 1 million active users.

                • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 14:23

                  @bio: Thanks mate, I'm looking into it. Looks very promising - was considering Firebase Auth as a replacement option.

          • outlander on 21/05/2025 - 22:04

            @chickenbanana: I hope my comment didn't come off that way. I was planning on paying for the app for a month or two, just to show a little support, but I'm rather busy atm so sometimes I forget.

            As for the others, please don't take that personally. This site is filled with vultures who love to pick things apart. What I do when I come across negativity is check the profile and see how many deals they have posted. 90% of the time, it's jack shit. Once you know that, they just become noise to be filtered out.

            • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 14:21

              @outlander: thanks @outlander that is helpful :) reminds me of the quote

              "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks." - Winston Churchill

  • GreenWave on 21/05/2025 - 14:46

    'Basic user cannot set desired price to be more than $15'.

    This is what I see. There still seem to be some subscription tiers.

    • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:51

      Thank you, ah I missed commenting out that old piece. Redeploying.

    • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:58

      can you try again?

      • GreenWave on 21/05/2025 - 15:34

        Seems to work now. Cheers!

  • geekcohen on 21/05/2025 - 14:50

    Good Luck. I tried this with a tool called "Price Tracker", and my proxy/crawling costs blew out. I've put my project on hold until I can find an alternative. It worked great and I was getting good tracking until more and more products were added and costs increased.

    • MS Paint on 21/05/2025 - 14:50

      Associated?

      • geekcohen on 21/05/2025 - 14:53

        @ pricewatcher.au

        What I tried and is on pause.

        • MS Paint on 21/05/2025 - 15:18
          +1

          Ahhhh. That makes sense. Didn't see the different Domain.

    • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 21/05/2025 - 14:55
      +1

      thanks mate, maybe I'll end up there too, let see how long :)

    • tenpercent on 21/05/2025 - 20:45

      Would you be able to set it up so users pay a share of the tracking costs for the products they want to track? If it cost $1 per year to track a product, and more than $1 is donated to pay for the tracking of that product, then excess funds could go towards other products that haven't been directly funded yet.

      • geekcohen on 22/05/2025 - 05:41

        That is a nice idea, but I don't know if it would gain traction. $1 per year, per product wouldn't cover costs either.

        Ideally a small subscription fee of like $5 per month for all products etc would work well, but even then, we would need a fair few people to be ongoing to cover costs.

        • tenpercent on 22/05/2025 - 07:24

          I was plucking the number out of the air.

          What are the costs of tracking products? Is there a $/product (or doesn't work that way)? Are you paying a third party company for the data or is it paying to run crawlers?

          • geekcohen on 22/05/2025 - 10:49

            @tenpercent:

            Are you paying a third party company for the data or is it paying to run crawlers

            Paying for a crawler/proxy and it was bandwidth used. Some sites were cheap and easy, but some required a different crawler and cost more.

            Was starting to cost $50 a day at point.

            • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 14:29

              @geekcohen: That's a lot! The biggest spending for me so far is for the LLM token usage, will probably go out of service, but it's good experience to have my app under a bit more load so that I can adjust my scalable and affordable system design.

  • Protractor on 21/05/2025 - 22:02

    I also have partnerships with retailers for commissions.

    I think that says it all

    • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 14:26

      Only works when I decide to show thousands of items on the homepage like with PriceHipster - I understand why the others have to design their app that way. For me, I hate it myself; it's not different from just going to the retailer website and looking for the wanted items. Do you really think I can make money from the commissions? It is an option, but it's not like they will pay a fixed monthly salary.

  • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 23:18
    Merged from PriceTracking.co App Now Supports ALDI, Coles, Woolworths for Your Grocery Shopping

    Hope this post is related to the "Food & Grocery" forum.

    PriceTracking.co app now supports Aldi, Coles, Woolworths for your grocery shopping.

    https://pricetracking.co

    100% free. Hope my app helps everyone during the cost of living crisis.

    • jv on 22/05/2025 - 23:25

      How do we get the app?

    • Lord Ra on 22/05/2025 - 23:30

      Mate, have a 'buy me a coffee' link somewhere please!

      • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 23:33

        Thanks, mate! :) That's very encouraging.

    • mrkorrupt on 22/05/2025 - 23:35

      Why must i log on to check the price?
      how is the data handled? stored? where? how is it stored?

      • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 23:41
        +2

        So it knows who to send the price alert to and at which desired price mark for which particular items. For solely checking prices, I'd suggest you visit the retailers directly. My app doesn't list product catalog, and even after you sign in, there's nothing in your dashboard until you add specific items you want to track. Please refer to: https://pricetracking.co/privacy

    • MS Paint on 22/05/2025 - 23:39

      AI-Powered Price Updates

      Are they really AI powered or just running code that a human wrote?

      • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 23:43

        custom trained LLM models recognise information and dynamically map different metadata structures into a standard schema.

        • freefall101 on 23/05/2025 - 00:04

          I might sound like an idiot, but it's basically a RAG attached to a scraping tool that sorts it all into something nice?

          I've been trying to build something like this (for something entirely different to shopping) and I love your front end to death, nice work!

          edit: Nevermind, just saw you mentioning the API. Looks really good and I like where you've gone with offering this.

          • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 23/05/2025 - 00:40
            +1

            @freefall101: Thanks mate, different retailers have different API response and metadata schema, my app also has its own schema too. I started with just 1 place and I want the ability to extend to new places quick and reliable. This app not just help me save, but a good project to get my hands dirty with the LLM model integration trend. Hope you will get your idea come to life, and thanks for the front-end comment.

      • Associatedchickenbanana @ PriceTracking on 22/05/2025 - 23:56

        just running code that a human wrote

        There's always code that humans wrote, and if you're in tech, you'd be familiar with the term "integration." Calling requests to the LLM models' API is one thing, other stuff is the infrastructure and boilerplate code around it to support the whole system - such as authentication, controllers, models, services, and interfaces, etc. Also besides LLM models, a mix with retailers' API: https://developer.live.bunnings.com.au/working-with-bunnings…

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