What CamelCamelCamel Tracks
CamelCamelCamel is a free tool that records the price history of products on Amazon. For every product, it shows three price lines: the Amazon price (when Amazon itself sells the item), the third-party new price (the lowest price from marketplace sellers), and the third-party used price. This historical data helps you understand whether a product's current price is normal, unusually high, or at a low point.
Why Price History Matters for Sourcing
When you find a product to buy for resale, the current Amazon price tells you today's selling opportunity. But the price history tells you whether that price is stable. A product currently selling at twenty pounds that has been between eighteen and twenty-two pounds for the past year is relatively safe. A product at twenty pounds that was at ten pounds last month and thirty pounds the month before is volatile and risky.
Price history also reveals seasonal patterns. Some products spike in price during specific months — toys before Christmas, garden products in spring — and knowing these patterns helps you time your buying and selling for maximum profit.
Reading the Charts
The CamelCamelCamel chart shows price on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. Flat lines indicate price stability. Spikes indicate temporary price increases, often caused by stock shortages. Drops indicate price competition or sales events. Gaps in the line mean the product was unavailable at that time.
Pay particular attention to what the third-party new price does. If it has been steadily declining over several months, that suggests increasing competition and a product you might want to avoid. If it has been stable or gradually rising, the product is likely to hold its value while you sell through your stock.
The Browser Extension
The Camelizer browser extension embeds price history charts directly on Amazon product pages. This means you can check price history without leaving the Amazon page — extremely useful during research. The extension is free and available for Chrome and Firefox. Install it and price charts appear automatically on every Amazon product page you visit.
Price Alerts
CamelCamelCamel also offers price alerts. You can set a target price and receive an email notification when the Amazon price drops to that level. For sourcing from Amazon itself (the flip strategy), this is useful for catching price drops on products you want to buy for resale.
Limitations to Keep in Mind
CamelCamelCamel does not show sales rank history, which means you cannot see demand trends over time from this tool alone. For that, you need tools like Keepa, which tracks both price and rank history. CamelCamelCamel also only shows the lowest price at any given time — it does not show what other sellers were charging or how many were on the listing.
Despite these limitations, it remains one of the most useful free tools for Amazon sellers. Checking price history should be part of your product evaluation process every time you consider buying something for resale.