Slot-based pricing: pay for what you monitor, not what you sell

01What a slot is

A slot is one product monitored in one region. A region is a country, or a state, province or other first-level region inside one: Pricebeeper covers 67 countries and about 1,700 of those. Each state counts as its own region, so a product tracked in Texas and in California uses 2 slots and 2 regions.

Each plan caps two things: the total number of slots and the number of distinct regions. Within those caps you split slots however you like. The table shows the smallest plan that fits some common setups.

The region cap matters as much as the slots. 100 products in 5 states is only 500 slots, which Starter has, but 5 regions, which it doesn't. Pro would cover it at $799; Starter with region packs covers it for $69 a month. Regional price tracking explains how regions work.

02Plans side by side

Free reads your own product pages and up to 3 pinned competitor pages per product weekly; it doesn't search Google Shopping or Amazon. Starter and Plus add a monthly search for competing sellers on both (up to 40 sellers for a matched Google product) and re-read known sellers and pinned pages weekly. Growth and up re-read every known seller daily and the 5 cheapest offers and pinned pages every 6 hours, and add MAP monitoring, repricing and ad monitoring. Pro adds automatic repricing, Business company SSO, and Custom daily or hourly searches.

Pinned competitor pages, viewers (up to 100 on paid plans) and API access don't use slots. Daily and weekly re-checks explains how each plan re-reads known sellers.

03Your catalog and variants are free

Catalog size never affects the price. An 8,000-product store on Starter that attaches the 300 products competing on price uses 300 of its 500 slots; the other 7,700 wait in the catalog until you want them. Catalog import covers the sources.

Variants aren't counted either. A Shopify product or WooCommerce parent product is one product whatever its sizes or colors, so a T-shirt in 12 sizes is one slot per region. Some tools price by catalog size instead: Pricefy's plans cap the SKUs you can load (50 to 25,000 by plan), and Prisync's Shopify plans count variants as products, according to their pricing pages and app listings.

04Slot packs and region packs

Packs add room to a paid plan without changing it. They bill on the same subscription at the plan's interval, and you can hold up to 20 of each pack.

• Starter at 750 slots: $39 plus one 250 pack is $54 a month.
• Starter or Plus: Starter with four 250 packs costs $99 for 1,500 slots; Plus gives 1,500 slots for $99 with 3 seats instead of 2.
• Growth at 5,000 slots: $209 plus two 1,000 packs is $329 a month, against $799 for Pro.

Annual pack prices are 12 times the monthly price, so packs carry no annual discount. A pack added mid-cycle is charged straight away for the rest of the period. Packs need a paid subscription, so they can't be added during the Growth trial.

05Annual billing, the trial and the Free plan

Annual plans cost about 17% less than 12 monthly payments, roughly two months free: Starter $388 a year against $468, Plus $990 a year against $1,188, Growth $2,080 a year against $2,508, Pro $7,999 a year against $9,588, Business $19,999 a year against $23,988. Switching from monthly to annual starts a new yearly period and charges it straight away.

The Growth trial lasts 14 days and needs no card. It is available once per email address (an address with a +tag counts as the same inbox), from the Free plan, once your email is verified. We email you before it ends. If you don't subscribe, the account moves to Free: nothing is charged, the newest slots beyond Free's 50 (and regions beyond 1) are paused, and the email says how many.

Free itself has no time limit: 50 slots in 1 region, 1 user, checked weekly. Create an account to start there or with the trial.

06Upgrades, downgrades and cancelling

• Upgrades take effect at once and charge the prorated difference now. If your bank asks you to confirm the payment, the old plan stays until it is paid.
• Downgrades also take effect at once; the unused part of the old plan is credited to your next invoice.
• Cancelling keeps the plan until the end of the period you paid for, and you can undo it until then. After that the account moves to Free.
• Failed payments: the plan stays while the card is retried. If the subscription ends unpaid, the account moves to Free.
• Cards, invoices and tax IDs are managed in the Stripe customer portal, linked from the billing page.

07What happens to slots over the limit

A smaller plan never deletes anything. Slots over the new limit are paused, and paused slots keep their history. Say you monitor 800 products in one country on Plus and move to Starter: the 500 oldest slots stay active and the newest 300 are paused.

1. 1

   Regions first

   Over the region cap, the regions you started monitoring first stay active, and slots in newer regions are paused.

2. 2

   Then slots

   Within those regions, the oldest slots stay active up to the new slot count; newer ones are paused.

3. 3

   Still counted

   Paused slots still count toward your total, so new products can't be attached until you remove some or add room.

4. 4

   Resumed automatically

   When room returns (an upgrade, a pack, or slots you delete), slots paused this way resume, oldest first. Slots you paused yourself stay paused.

Pinned competitor pages over a smaller per-product limit and teammates over a smaller seat count are handled the same way: the newest are paused or suspended, and come back when room returns. Teams and security covers seats.

08Paying through Shopify

Stores that sign up through the Shopify app pay through Shopify instead of by card: the same plans and prices, with the plan and its packs as one recurring charge on the store's Shopify bill. On Shopify, the trial ends in a paid plan unless you cancel, because you approve the charge before it starts.

09Limits of the model

• Tracking one product in many regions multiplies slots. A national chain comparing 1,000 products across 25 states needs 25,000 slots.
• Searches for sellers run once a month from Starter to Business, so a new seller appears at the next monthly search unless you pin its page, and Free doesn't search for them at all. Daily or hourly searches are only on Custom, priced by contract.
• There are no seat packs. More seats come with a larger plan.
• The trial is only on Growth, once per email address.

To check your own numbers against another tool, the Pricefy comparison and Prisync comparison work through the bills at several catalog sizes, and the pricing page has the current table.

Questions people ask