The Best Price Comparison Sites In Canada

Using price comparison websites is one of the easiest ways to save money when shopping online. They also come in handy when shopping offline because prices are usually identical for stores that have both an online and an offline presence. There are even some listings for stores that you cannot purchase from online, like Canadian Tire. Besides, it is always good to have current pricing information even when shopping at an offline-only store to help evaluates prices and for price matching purposes.

The only thing to keep in mind when using these sites, is that no one price comparison site has access to the pricing information for every store. They only have products and prices listed for those retailers who have partnered with them and provided access to their product databases. For that reason, it is best to check prices using at least a few price comparison websites when doing your research, not just the one you happen to like the most. Whenever I make a purchase, I will typically check all of them simultaneously along with manually checking a few other online stores that I know aren’t listed on any of the price comparison websites, just to be sure.

Below you will find a quick blurb on each of the Canadian price comparison sites including any special features or advantages they have going for them. I have done my best to order them according to their popularity from the amount of visitor traffic they receive on a monthly basis, which is usually a decent indicator of positive user experience and overall quality.

1) ShopToIt.ca

ShopToIt is one of the oldest and also one of the best price comparison websites in Canada. They were launched all the way back in 2005 and since then they have added plenty of features and conveniences to the site that make it a joy to use. It also has the broadest inventory out of any of the other sites including many more product categories, like baby items and furniture, the most of the other comparison sites don’t bother with at all.

Value Added Features:

• A complete collection of shopping advice and buying guides.
• Relevant guides are displayed when viewing individual products, which makes finding appropriate guides very easy.
• You can create an account and use it to store personalized wish lists of products you like.
• iPhone app for comparison shopping on the go.

2) ShopBot.ca

ShopBot is even older than ShopToIt, having started in 2004 but I think they were initially focused more on electronics and technology products which may have stunted their growth. They have since expanded into a full range of categories and have an impressive collection of both products and stores. They are also still actively innovating and expanding by just recently branching out into the travel arena by offering flight, car, and hotel price comparisons. These services are still in beta at the time of this writing.

Value Added Features:

• Plugins for all of the popular web browsers so you can integrate product searches into your multi-purpose search box.
• Travel comparison shopping for flights, rental cars, and hotels.

3) Wishabi

Wishabi is one of the newest price comparison engines in Canada and is quickly growing to be one of the best as well. Because they are new, they have a lot of new and exciting features that you won’t find at any of the other price comparison sites. For instance, they have icons beside store listing indicating what kind of policies the store offers like free shipping, return policy, and warranty information. This kind of thing is really useful and they have a lot more fancy graphs and price notification features to get excited about as well. They also have a focus on cross border shopping and give you cross border price comparisons in addition to Canadian pricing information.

Value Added Features:

• Price history graphs and price ratings indicating if the current price is a good deal or not.
• Ability to share and like deals as well as post your own deals if you find something great – you can even earn a little money for doing so.
• You can create a Wishabi account and receive alerts when are product you are interested in comes into your price range.
• A heat map of related products so you can see what else you might be interested in that is selling a big discount.
• Icons indicating store policies including: return options, warranty service, customer support availability, price protection availability, and shipping options.
• Cross border shopping tab so you can see how much the same product is selling for in the USA.

4) PriceCanada.com

PriceCanada is the price comparison website developed by RedFlagDeals and it is actually one of my favourite ones to use because I just like the look and feel of it for some reason. They were also the first price comparison site to offer a detailed pricing history and graphs so you could track how prices have risen and fallen over time. This helps make your buying decision easier so you don’t have to worry about having missed an amazing deal in the past, which would indicate a likely similar sale in the future. Unfortunately their main focus has stayed with computers, electronics, and entertainment items like DVDs and video games. I would like to see them branch out into other categories as well.

Value Added Features:

• Retailer ratings for every online store so you can easily balance price and customer experience when making purchasing decisions.
• Price history graphs and price ratings indicating if the current price is a good deal or not.
• You can create a PriceCanada account and receive alerts when are product you are interested in comes into your price range.
• A compact listing of all stores that sell a particular process for easy comparison.
• Detailed product specifications page for every product, a very rare feature.
• Lists of popular products and products with recent price drops so you can get in on deals as they happen.
• Raw pricing data so you can see a detailed price history by date.
• iPhone app for comparison shopping on the go.

5) PriceBat.ca

PriceBat 100% focused on computer and electronic stores, so their selection is somewhat limited. That said, they do have the most comprehensive listing of electronics store of any price comparison site in Canada. So if you are looking for the best deals on computer parts and electronics, look no further!

Value Added Features:

• The most comprehensive product listings for electronics and computer parts and accessories.
• User reviews are included right with the product you are looking at to make sure you don’t buy a dud!
• A really nice price comparison page that is easy to scan through for the best prices and your favourite stores.
• Great for finding small stores that you’ve never heard of before.

6) Canada Post Shopper

Canada post uses a very similar price comparison engine to that of Wishabi, so it is likely that they are sharing the same technology somehow. It is essentially the same search results and stores but lacking a lot of the awesome features of Wishabi. There is nothing really value added that Wishabi doesn’t do better.

7) Bing Shopping

Bing also uses the same price comparison engine as Wishabi and lacks even more features than the Canada Post Shopper does, so there are no real advantages to it.

8) PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber started in the USA and then migrated to Canada and they actually used to be one of my favourite price comparison websites. However, after a short time of being always updated and offering cool features like paying users a small fee to review products, they mostly fizzled out. Now their results are severely lacking with almost no good Canadian online stores being listed. It is still worth checking PriceGrabber, just to be sure, but it shows that Canada isn’t their main focus.

Value Added Features:

• You can create a PriceGrabber account and use it to track your favourite products.
• Both products and stores have user reviews/ratings associated with them, but the number of reviews is often limited.

9) PriceDX

PriceDX may not be worth including because it is not at all popular and the number of product categories they offer is extremely limited. They are entirely focused on computer parts and electronics so it may be worth a look when buying said products because they may list a few stores that the other price comparison sites do not.

Standard Price Comparison Site Features

These features weren’t included in the above descriptions because they are pretty much standard amongst all of the price comparison sites. I am including them here so you will have a good idea of what kind of functionality these sites offer and to remind you to give these features a try:

• Find products either by search or by browsing through categories.
• Filter search results by price, category, manufacturer, store, etc.
  • Not every store has every type of filter, but most offer at least one or two filtering options.
• Product thumbnails on search result pages making it easier to identify products when searching.
• When viewing a product, competing prices from all stores are conveniently listed on the same page for easy comparison.
  • ShopToIt, ShopBot and PriceDX are the only three not to offer this feature; You have to scan through the search results instead.

Note: Traffic estimates for the Canada Post Shopper and Bing Shopping could not be obtained. They are both relatively new to the comparison shopping scene in Canada and are also almost identical to Wishabi, so I opted to place them further down in the list.

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