Whether you're looking to save money on bills or find the best price for your next big purchase, comparison sites should always be part of the journey – and we've rounded up our top picks.
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With hundreds, if not thousands, of companies competing for your hard-earned cash, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to turn.
But this is where comparison sites come in. They can show you a huge selection of offers all in one place, letting you filter out the rubbish and find the best deal for you.
We've put together a list of the very best comparison sites and split them up based on whether you're looking to compare bills and other financial products, or just find deals for your shopping. And make sure to read on for our tips on how to use these websites – it really does pay to use them all!
What's in this guide?
- Best bills comparison websites
- Best shopping price comparison websites
- How to use price comparison sites
Comparison sites aren't the only way to find the best deals. Our guides, like those for student broadband deals, student bank accounts and SIM only plans, cover all of the top offers and sometimes feature exclusive deals that aren't available on comparison sites.
11 best comparison sites
These are the best comparison sites:
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Compare the Market
Probably best known for its collection of meerkat mascots, Aleksandr, Sergei, Oleg and co., Compare the Market is one of the biggest and best comparison sites out there.
The website lets you compare deals across all the major products, including energy bills, credit cards and pretty much every type of insurance you could ever wish for.
To tempt you into choosing them over their rivals, Compare the Market also runs two promotional offers for its customers: Meerkat Movies and Meerkat Meals, which get you a year of two-for-one on cinema tickets and restaurant meals respectively.
All you need to do is make a qualifying purchase through Compare the Market (the full list of eligible products is on their site, but the majority are included) and then claim the reward in your account. Simples.
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Confused.com
Despite a strong focus on motoring – be that car insurance, car finance or whatever else – Confused.com's comparison tools extend to all of the usual bills and financial products that you'd expect to find on a site like this.
In a crowded marketplace, Confused.com's cherry-on-top is its rewards scheme. It's only available to customers who buy car, home or van insurance through the site (we told you they had a focus on motoring!), but if you do, the offers are worth a look.
They change from time to time but, at the time of writing, Confused.com Rewards was offering eligible customers perks including a £20 Lidl Plus coupon, 12 free car washes and, perhaps best of all, £20 to spend at Domino's.
Of course, you shouldn't let this influence your choice of site too much – use our tips for using comparison websites, and if the best deal happens to be via Confused.com, it's a nice little bonus.
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GoCompare
Where Compare the Market has meerkats, GoCompare has its own semi-annoying mascot: Gio Compario the opera singer.
Again, this comparison site covers all the bases – and as one of the major players, it's certainly worth checking out their offers when you're scouring the market.
While the perks offered by GoCompare aren't quite as exciting as those offered by its competitors, they may well be among the most generous.
At the time of writing, customers who buy a home or car insurance policy through GoCompare will get £250 of excess cover for free, on them. This means that if you need to make a claim on your policy, GoCompare will pay the first £250 of your excess (the amount you have to pay before your insurance covers the rest – read our student car insurance guide for more info).
It may not be free Domino's or cheap cinema tickets, but it could be worth much, much more if disaster strikes.
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MoneySuperMarket
MoneySuperMarket (or MoneySuperMaaaaaaaaahhhhhhket as they like to go by in their adverts) is another jack of all trades, allowing you to compare prices across all of the typical areas.
While they don't have any ongoing special offers (unlike, say, Meerkat Movies and Meerkat Meals), MoneySuperMarket regularly has shorter-term incentives that are just as enticing.
At the time of writing, you could get a £100 Amazon gift card for taking out life insurance through the site. Or, if you purchased a car insurance policy via MoneySuperMarket, they were offering £150 of vouchers to put towards things like your MOT, servicing and tyres.
As we said, these offers are subject to change, but if their replacements are anywhere near as good, they'll definitely be worth your consideration.
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Quotezone
You may not have heard of Quotezone before, but that's no reason not to give them a try – especially given our tips on how to use comparison sites.
Quotezone focuses on insurance – specifically car insurance – but again, they do offer a comparison on pretty much everything you'd expect.
And, unlike most of its competitors, Quotezone's rewards scheme isn't limited to those who actually buy a policy – it's available to anyone who simply uses their service to get an insurance quote (car, home, van, bike, pet, travel, breakdown or bicycle).
However, Quotezone Rewards is essentially just a cashback scheme that gets you discounts on your online shopping. With that in mind, it's worth looking at the other top cashback sites before committing to shopping through Quotezone Rewards to see if better deals are available elsewhere.
Even if you gain access to Quotezone Rewards+ (available to users who actually buy one of the insurance policies mentioned earlier), we'd still advise you to do the same. Although this unlocks more offers and higher rates of cashback, other cashback sites could still represent a better option.
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Uswitch
Uswitch has a strong focus on household bills: in particular, broadband deals, mobile phone tariffs and gas and electricity. However, it does still have comparison tools for all of the other typical products you'd expect.
Sadly, Uswitch doesn't have any ongoing offers to draw in new customers, and nothing short-term at the time of writing.
That said, like some of their competitors, they do still have a selection of often excellent exclusive deals that you won't find on any other comparison site – some of which we've taken advantage of ourselves in the past.
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Google Shopping
As part of its apparent quest to provide absolutely every tool you could ever wish to use online, Google has its own price comparison service too: Google Shopping.
As it's Google, it has the usual simple, easy-to-use interface you've come to know, and it lets you compare prices for products across a huge range of websites.
It does, of course, list results from the biggies (Amazon and eBay), but there are plenty of lesser-known retailers on here too. These can offer lower prices, but just be wary of any websites that you've not heard of before – check the user reviews for each retailer to keep you and your money safe.
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idealo
For our money, idealo is one of the very best price comparison websites for shopping.
As well as comparing prices for products across thousands of different online retailers, idealo also has a price tracking function that shows you the average cost of an item over the past 12 months. This is super useful for working out if you're actually getting a good deal, or if the product is often much cheaper.
Using this tool, idealo also lets you set price alerts. Once you've signed up with your email address or downloaded the app, you can request alerts when the price either drops by a certain percentage or below a certain amount.
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Kelkoo
Like its competitors, Kelkoo compares prices for millions of products across thousands of websites.
Unlike Google Shopping and idealo, Kelkoo doesn't feature user reviews for each shop. But it does claim to work with many retailers directly and even tells you when each price was last updated, so you should know exactly how much you're set to spend.
Kelkoo's most unique feature, though, is its eco-filter: Kelkoo Green. Search on this part of the site and you'll only be shown products that are kind to the planet – ideal if you're looking to buy an eco-friendly gift or you're keen to reduce your carbon footprint.
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PriceRunner
At the time of writing, PriceRunner's homepage proudly boasted that the site compares prices on 2.6 million products across 6,100 UK shops.
These are certainly some impressive figures, and PriceRunner is arguably one of the slicker and more user-friendly price comparison websites.
PriceRunner has a couple of tricks up its sleeve for members, too. Register for a free account and you'll be able to receive price alerts, compile lists of your favourite products and even get their Buyer Protection, which covers you for purchases up to £5,000 should your order arrive damaged (or not at all).
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Price Spy
Last, but by no means least, is PriceSpy.
It has a lot of the bells and whistles that you'll find on other sites, like price history (stretching back over two years) and retailer reviews.
But PriceSpy also has a couple of features that many of its competitors don't. For starters, you can directly compare products on PriceSpy (such as two pairs of trainers) to see how the price and other features stack up against each other.
This price comparison site also has a daily deals section that lists hundreds of the very best offers of the day across every product and shop featured on the site. Of course, you should try not to get sucked into making an impulse buy, as you're not saving money if you buy something you hadn't intended to!
How to use price comparison sites
Given that almost every price comparison website makes its own bold claims about just how many retailers and providers they list, you may wonder why we've listed so many.
The truth is that while a single comparison site will indeed feature a huge number of deals, there's never a guarantee that this will include the best deals.
For a few reasons, not least the fact that no one website ever lists every single retailer, you should always use multiple price comparison websites when you're researching a purchase. This way, you'll be able to give yourself the very best chance of securing the lowest price.
As we touched on earlier, you should also be wary of any websites or brands that you're not familiar with. The barrier to entry for appearing on a comparison site isn't always that high, so there's a chance that a slightly dodgier retailer could slip through the net. Do your research if you're in any doubt.
And finally, don't forget that the cheapest price on a comparison site isn't always the cheapest price possible. Exclusive offers (as we often have across our site, including in our student deals section) usually won't appear on price comparison sites, so it pays to keep an eye out for these too.
What's more, you can often take an extra chunk off the listed price by applying a student discount code or by going via a cashback website. Don't stop until you've brought the cost down as low as it'll go!
Making the most of comparison sites is just one of our top tips for saving money.
