Wikibuy Review: Free Tool to Help You Find the Best Deal
Ranking
9/10
Wikibuy finds the best prices on items online and in stores, plus you can get rewards just for shopping. Find out if it could help you save money.
One great way to save money while shopping online is to comparison shop, but it takes time and effort to compare prices from different online stores. Wikibuy is an app that does the comparison shopping for you, making sure that you always get the best deal possible.
What is Wikibuy?
Wikibuy is an app offered by Capital One, the bank and credit card issuer. You can add the app to your web browser and use it to help you compare deals on all the things that you buy online. Once you’ve added the app to your browser, you’re ready to start shopping. The app automatically informs you if there’s a better deal available on a different site.
Wikibuy also helps you save money in other ways, applying coupon codes and giving you rewards points that you can use toward perks like gift cards. Best of all, Wikibuy is completely free to use.
Product Features
Wikibuy has plenty of features to help you save money.
Price Comparison
Once you install Wikibuy on your browser, the app tracks your online shopping. It crowdsources product prices from the millions of Wikibuy users to create a database of the best prices on the internet.
When you search for a product on Amazon, Wikibuy notes the price of that product. If another Wikibuy user has bought the same product from another store, Wikibuy compares the prices and notifies you if it’s cheaper on another site. Because Wikibuy has more than 3 million users, it might have information about dozens of other websites selling that product, letting it direct you to the absolute cheapest option.
Your shopping also helps other Wikibuy users. If you buy something at a great price and another Wikibuyer goes to buy that product, Wikibuy will automatically notify them of the great price you found. You help other shoppers while other shoppers help you.
Automatic Couponing
Online merchants often offer coupon codes that customers can use to save some money on their purchases. The problem is that they often distribute the codes through myriad social media channels, e-mail lists, and other methods. It’s hard to find the coupon codes and often, they don’t work, meaning you’ve wasted time finding and inputting the codes.
Wikibuy keeps track of the coupon codes that Wikibuyers have successfully used and automatically inputs them for you. If one or more of the codes works, Wikibuy automatically uses the one that will save you the most money.
Price Drop Notification
Wikibuy keeps track of the things you look at or purchase online. If the price on a product drops, Wikibuy lets you know so that you can jump on the deal.
Even if you’ve already purchased the product, some credit cards and merchants offer price protection, meaning you can put some of the money that you spent back in your bank account.
Rewards
You can link your credit cards with Wikibuy to unlock local offers. Occasionally, Wikibuy will partner with local merchants to give its users rewards when they shop. For example, you might see an offer to get 5% back when you eat at a nearby restaurant. All you have to do is add the offer to your account and pay for the meal with your linked card.
Wikibuy pays those rewards to you in the form of Wikibuy credits, which you can use to buy gift cards to popular stores like Groupon, eBay, or Staples.
Universal Search
If you want to make sure you get the best price on a product, you can search for it directly on Wikibuy’s website. Wikibuy will search its database to find the best vendor and direct you right to the purchase page.
You can also use this feature when you’re shopping in a store. If you download the Wikibuy app to your phone, you can use the phone’s camera to scan a product’s barcode. Wikibuy automatically compares prices from the best online and physical retailers to let you know if you’re getting a good deal.
Pricing and Fees
One of the best things about Wikibuy is that there is no cost to install the app and no fee to use it. It claims that using Wikibuy can help you save money, and there’s no real risk of trying it out because you never have to pay for the service.
Even if you’re skeptical that Wikibuy can help you save, there’s no reason not to give the app a try.
Signing Up
Signing up for Wikibuy is easy. You can start by visiting the Wikibuy website and installing the browser add-on or downloading the app to your phone. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have to provide some basic information:
- Your name
- Your zip code (to help it calculate shipping and taxes)
- Whether you have Amazon Prime (to help it account for shipping times and costs)
- E-mail address
- Password
The app will also ask you to enter some of your favorite stores and to provide estimates of your online spending, but you can skip these steps.
Once you’ve done that, which takes less than five minutes, you’re ready to start using Wikibuy.
Synchronization
Wikibuy syncs your data between the phone app and the web browser effectively. You can easily search for items and view your search history through both. The phone app and browser also share a watchlist so you can add items to the list from anywhere.
All you have to do is make sure that you use the same e-mail address and password on each device.
Security
Wikibuy is offered by Capital One, a major bank and credit card provider, so it has some of the latest and most up-to-date security available. While the app does have to track your shopping habits to effectively track the lowest prices for different products, your information is protected by powerful encryption.
Wikibuy does state that it collects and stores the following information on users:
- User-provided information
- Cookies and automatically-collected information
- Location information
- Payment information
- Transaction data
If you’re very security and privacy-conscious, it’s worth understanding the information you’re giving up before installing the app.
Mobile Support
Wikibuy has great mobile support. The app is available both through Apple’s App Store and on Google Play, so you can install it on almost any smartphone on the market.
The iOS app has a 4-star rating out of 5 while the Android version has 2.8 stars out of five. Still, both apps are effective and let you search for the best deals, which means you can easily use the service while you’re on the phone.
Support and Customer Service
Wikibuy is a relatively simple application, so it offers bare-bones customer support.
If you have any issues, you can visit the app’s knowledge base to get answers to frequently asked questions. If you need further assistance, you’ll have to e-mail the Wikibuy support team. There is no option for phone or live chat support.
Wikibuy Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free to use — Wikibuy is completely free to install and use. Even if it doesn’t work for you, there’s no risk in giving it a try.
- Rewards — Wikibuy partners with local merchants to help you earn rewards when you shop. These rewards stack with credit card rewards, letting you earn even more when you use your card.
- Great potential savings — Wikibuy helps you find the lowest available prices by crowdsourcing price information from millions of users. It also makes couponing easier. In the long run, you can easily save hundreds by using the app.
Cons
- Privacy concerns — Wikibuy works by tracking your online shopping and using that data to help other users. If you’re very privacy conscious, this might be a deal breaker.
- No guaranteed savings — There’s no guarantee that Wikibuy will ever save you money. It might never find a better price or a working coupon code, which means you’ll have installed the app for no reason.
Wikibuy Alternatives
Wikibuy isn’t the only app that helps you do comparison shopping online. If you don’t think Wikibuy is for you but want to try a similar app, consider these alternatives.
Swagbucks
Swagbucks is an app that helps you earn rewards while you shop online. Unlike Wikibuy, Swagbucks won’t help you comparison shop, but it does offer the chance to earn extra cashback when you use it to click through to your preferred online stores.
Like Wikibuy, you can also install Swagbucks as a browser extension and on your phone to get automatic prompts to activate rewards, making it easy to earn.
ShopSavvy
ShopSavvy is a smartphone app that helps you comparison shop while you’re in a store. Just open the app and scan the barcode of any item you want to buy. The app automatically finds online and local retailers that sell the same product and tells you where the best deal is.
You can also set the app to notify you of price drops and sales so you can buy at the perfect time to save money.
FAQs
These are some frequently asked questions about Wikibuy.
Who is Wikibuy For?
Wikibuy is designed for people who shop online. It can help you find the best deal whether you shop online daily or rarely.
Wikibuy also works for people who do all their shopping in person thanks to the universal search function built into the phone app. Anyone who does any shopping at all can use Wikibuy to save money.
Bottom Line
Wikibuy is a powerful app that crowdsources pricing information from millions of online shoppers. By taking advantage of this powerful tool you can save money every time you shop online. There’s no cost to use the app, so there’s no risk if you want to give it a try.
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