How to track game prices (and never overpay again)

A big red "-75%" feels like a deal. It isn't — not on its own. A discount percentage only tells you how far today's price sits below some number the store chose to call "list price," and stores pick that number to make the discount look good. The only figure that actually matters is whether today's price is at or near what the game has ever sold for. To know that, you need price history — and price history is free to check.

This guide shows you the tools that reveal a game's real low, how to set alerts so the deal comes to you, and how to read a price chart so you can tell a genuine seasonal-sale floor from a token 10% markdown dressed up with a countdown timer. Pair it with our guide to the discount curve and you'll rarely pay full price again.

Why the percentage lies and the low tells the truth

Here's the trap. A game launches at $60. Six months later it's permanently $40 at every store. During a sale, one store shows "-33% — was $60, now $40." That's not a sale — it's just the normal price with a strikethrough. Meanwhile a different game shows only "-20%," but that 20% takes it below every price it has ever hit. The smaller percentage is the far better deal.

Percentages are anchored to a "list" or "reference" price the store controls. The all-time low is anchored to reality: it's the cheapest that specific game has actually sold for across the tracked stores. When you shop by the low instead of the percentage, the marketing stops working on you. Your only question becomes: is this at or near the historical low, and if not, how far off is it?

The tools that show real price history

All of these are free reference tools, not stores. They watch official retailers and log prices over time. You use them to decide, then you buy from an authorized store — never from a random link a tracker didn't vouch for. Each tool has a lane it's best in.

IsThereAnyDeal is the one most PC buyers should start with. Search a game and it shows the current price at multiple authorized stores side by side, plus the lowest price it has ever tracked. If you only check one thing before buying a PC game, check whether the current price matches or beats that recorded low.

SteamDB goes deeper on Steam specifically. It logs the price history for a game's Steam listing and shows the lowest recorded price, so you can see whether the current Steam discount is the real floor or just a warm-up before a bigger seasonal sale. It pairs naturally with knowing the Steam sale schedule.

Deku Deals fills the console gap that PC tools leave. Console prices don't move the way PC prices do, and eShop, PlayStation Store, and Xbox discounts are easy to miss. Deku Deals tracks those, keeps a wishlist, and emails you when something drops — the closest thing console players have to a SteamDB.

CamelCamelCamel and Keepa are for physical copies and hardware bought through Amazon. Disc prices bounce around a lot, and Amazon's own "list price" strikethroughs are notoriously unreliable, so a real history chart is the only way to know if a boxed copy or a controller is genuinely cheap. Keepa also runs as a browser extension that draws the price chart right on the product page.

Use built-in wishlists — they do half the work for free

Before you add a third-party tracker, use the ones already built into the stores. Every major platform has a wishlist, and every one of them will tell you when a wishlisted game goes on sale.

Steam wishlist

Add a game to your Steam wishlist and Steam emails you when it goes on sale, along with the discount. During the big seasonal events this is the single easiest way to catch a drop, because the email lands the day the sale starts. Keep your wishlist trimmed to games you'd actually buy — a 200-game wishlist becomes noise you learn to ignore.

eShop, PlayStation, and Xbox wishlists

Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox all have wishlist or "follow" features that notify you of price drops, either by email or through the console itself. They're less aggressive than Steam's, which is exactly why a console-focused tracker like Deku Deals is worth adding on top — it catches drops the first-party notification is slow to surface.

How to read a price-history chart

Open a chart and you'll usually see a jagged line: long flat stretches at the regular price, punctuated by sharp dips during sales. Learn to read three things.

The floor. Find the lowest point the line has ever reached. That's your target. If today's price is at or just above it, you're buying well. If today's price is way above the floor, the "sale" is mostly theater.

The recurring lows. Notice that the deepest dips tend to repeat around the same times each year — the big seasonal sales. If the floor only ever appears during those events and you're looking at a random mid-cycle discount that's nowhere near it, waiting a few weeks for the next seasonal sale often pays off. That's the whole idea behind the discount curve.

The trend. A newer game's floor keeps stepping lower over time as it ages; an older game's floor has usually settled. If the line has been drifting down every sale, a slightly-above-low price today may well be beaten next season. If it's flattened out near a stable floor, this might be as good as it gets, and you can buy without regret.

Spot the tricks: fake urgency and inflated "list" prices

Two tactics exist purely to short-circuit the check you just learned.

Countdown timers. A ticking "sale ends in 02:14:59" clock is designed to make you buy before you think. On the big storefronts, most games go on sale on a predictable rhythm, so the same title will almost certainly be discounted again — often deeper. A timer is a reason to check the history, not a reason to skip it.

Inflated strikethrough prices. The crossed-out "was $59.99" is frequently a number the game hasn't sold at in a long time, if ever. Ignore the strikethrough entirely. Compare the actual asking price today against the tracked historical low. If the tool's low is well under both numbers, the "discount" is smaller than it looks.

None of these trackers sell you the game, and that's the point — they have no reason to inflate anything. Once you've confirmed a good price, buy from an authorized retailer. Our guide to where to buy cheap games covers which stores are legitimate.