How a deal gets on this list

Most “70% off” you see online is arithmetic against a price nobody ever paid. The point of Ascend is to leave those out. Here is exactly what happens before something appears on the front page, and what we can and cannot vouch for.

Where listings come from

We aggregate from retailer listings and from public deal feeds that publish current retail prices. Each candidate arrives as a claim about two numbers: what an item costs now, and what it cost before.

We track these retailers: Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco.

A stated prior price is required

A candidate is only published when the source states a prior or regular price outright — a regular price, a list price, or a saving against one. If the only thing on offer is a current price with nothing to compare it to, we drop it. There is no way to call something a discount without knowing what it was.

We calculate the percentage ourselves from those two figures rather than repeating a percentage somebody else advertised. That is the whole reason the number on the left of each row can be trusted to match the prices next to it.

“Lowest price ever” is not a prior price

A lot of deal copy says things like “that’s a $52 low”. That describes the previous best price, not the regular one, and treating it as the anchor would make every discount look larger than it is. We deliberately reject that phrasing — it is exactly the trick our own guide to fake discounts tells you to distrust, and it would be strange to run on it.

Store-wide sales are not listed

“Up to 50% off” is a promotion, not a product. It has no single price, the “up to” almost never applies to the thing you want, and it cannot be checked. Those are filtered out.

What we do not publish

Amazon prices. Amazon only permits displaying pricing that comes from Amazon itself, so until we have that access directly, Amazon appears here as links and guidance rather than as figures. Everything with a price on it is from another retailer.

Reading the list

The large number on each row is the calculated discount. Beneath it are the prior price, the current price, what you keep, and the time the price was recorded. Colour carries one meaning only: the steepest tier is marked in amber, everything else in green.

Prices older than a day come off the list rather than sitting there going stale.

What we cannot tell you

Whether the thing is any good — we track prices, not quality. And whether the price still holds: retail prices move constantly, and the figure at the retailer when you check out is the only one that counts. The disclaimer sets out the rest.