How we check prices
No scraping, no bots. Someone opens each product page and records what it says, then the date goes on the price.
We check the products people look at most every day, and the rest as often as they change. If a price hasn't been confirmed recently, we mark it rather than quietly showing you a stale number.
What the dates mean
Every price on this site carries the date it was last confirmed — “Checked today”, “Checked 3 days ago”. That date is the whole point: it tells you how much to trust the number without us having to promise a schedule we might not keep.
A price we haven't confirmed in more than 10 days is faded, labelled may be out of date, and left out of the cheapest-price comparison entirely. We would rather show you fewer confident numbers than a tidy table that quietly went wrong.
Which country these prices are for
The United States. These stores change currency and catalogue depending on where you are, so a price is only meaningful alongside a country. We collect with US delivery selected, and say so on every page that quotes a price.
That's also why our third store is Olive Young US rather than Olive Young Global: Global stopped shipping to the United States on May 29, 2026, so its prices no longer describe anything a US reader can buy. If you're shopping from elsewhere the comparison is still useful — which store is cheaper usually holds — but the figures are US ones.
Where the numbers come from
Straight off each store's own product page, at the price a buyer would actually pay: sale price rather than the crossed-out one, and the selected size or variant rather than the cheapest option on the page. When a store only sells a product as part of a set, we say so instead of inventing a per-unit price to compare.
Same product, or just the same name. Before two listings go into a comparison we match brand, product name, size, count and variant, and we keep the store's own listing name next to each price so the match can be checked later. When a store sells a different size, or a differently formulated version under a near-identical name, we mark it "not sold at this store" with a note rather than compare it. For sunscreen the name isn't enough: we compare the listed UV filters, because the same line can carry a different filter set in different markets.
Product photos come from iHerb's affiliate product feed and are shown unmodified for products we link there; other products show a category icon.
What we don't do
- We don't scrape or run bots against the stores.
- We don't claim prices are live or real-time. They're confirmed, and dated.
- We don't let commissions touch the ranking. The cheapest store is whichever the data says, whether or not it's the one store (iHerb) that pays us. See our affiliate disclosure.
When a store's shipping terms or catalogue change, we log it with the date and a link rather than quietly updating the number. Store changes we've recorded →