We checked 34 days of AliExpress "before" prices. The seller's number never once matched our record.
Quick story: a wireless earbuds listing on AliExpress shows "57% OFF" — crossed out from $74.52 down to $32.37.
We'd been logging that exact listing's price once a day for 34 straight days. The highest price we ever recorded in that window was $35.77. The seller's $74.52 "before" price never appeared — not once, on any of the 34 days.
That's not a one-off. Across the listings our small team tracks, most "before" prices sit well outside anything we've actually seen the product sell for.
So we built PriceProven — a free Chrome extension that shows the recorded price history right on the AliExpress product page. No sign-in, no account, no upsell tier. We're not making any money on it (revenue is $0, on purpose, for now) — we just wanted a tool that tells the truth about a price before we buy something.
We keep a public "what we got wrong" log too, because we'd rather be corrected than sound more confident than the data supports.
Chrome extension (free): https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/oimaeaabbkjaeplnijjiengkddndgdin
Site / methodology: https://priceproven.com
Genuinely want this crowd's take:
- If you were in our shoes — $0 revenue, a tool whose whole pitch is "we tell you the truth" — would you ever charge for it? Or does putting a price on it undermine the trust angle from day one?
- Is this even a fixable problem long-term, or the moment a tool like this gets popular, do sellers just start setting "before" prices that dodge whatever we're measuring?
- Have you personally caught a fake "before" price anywhere — AliExpress, Amazon, Shein? What tipped you off?
- Would you actually use something like this regularly, or is it more of a "check once when I'm suspicious" tool for you?
Happy to go into how the daily tracking works, or why we picked "days tracked" over just a percentage.
"The seller's $74.52 \"before\" price never appeared — not once" is the line I would keep. 34 days is enough to throw the crossed-out number out.
I have a smaller version of the same hole. 36 people signed up. I can name four sources after I started recording: 2 google, 1 chatgpt.com, 1 direct. There is still no row I can point at for this site. A clean pitch does not create that row.
Charging is a later question. The first one is whether anyone would notice if the extension went quiet for a week. Write that down before you put a price on the truth.
If it went quiet next week, whose name is on that sentence?
Appreciate the feedback, alexecho1! It’s great to hear that specific line resonated—I'll definitely keep it front and center in my pitch.
I completely feel your pain on the attribution 'black box'. It’s so frustrating to see the user count go up but have no clear map of how they actually found you.
Your point about the 'quiet week test' is absolute gold. You’re totally right: building a tool that people rely on enough to notice if it breaks is the only metric that matters right now. Monetization is a distraction until I can confidently answer whose name is on that sentence. Thanks for putting it into such a sharp perspective!