How ShelfAware Works

ShelfAware is the Canadian shopping assistant built around four things: real-time prices and price history (with all-time-low charts), in-store stock levels at physical store locations near you, free price drop alerts sent the moment a target price is hit, and a live clearance deals page surfacing items at 40% off or more. Unlike online-only price trackers, ShelfAware tells you which physical store locations near you have your item in stock and at what price, so you can walk in and buy it today.

ShelfAware currently supports Canadian Tire, Best Buy Canada, Walmart Canada, Home Depot Canada, Princess Auto, Canada Computers, Visions Electronics, and Home Hardware. More retailers are added regularly.

The easiest way is to paste the product's URL directly from the retailer's website. ShelfAware automatically extracts the product ID. Alternatively, the SKU is usually shown on the product page, on the physical packaging, or in your order confirmation. UPCs (barcodes) are printed on the product box.

ShelfAware pulls inventory data in real time directly from each retailer's own systems, the same data their own apps use. Stock levels can change within minutes of a purchase, so we recommend confirming with the store for high-demand items before making a trip.

Yes. Beyond price tracking, ShelfAware acts as an inventory tracker for each supported retailer, pulling live stock levels store by store so you can see exactly which nearby locations have an item in stock right now.

"Ghost inventory" is when a retailer's website shows an item in stock at a store but the shelf is actually empty, usually because the system hasn't caught up with a recent sale or an unrestocked return. ShelfAware pulls the same live inventory data retailers use in their own apps, so it's as current as the retailer's own system, but no online source can fully eliminate ghost inventory. For anything worth a special trip, it's still smart to call ahead and confirm.

Prices are fetched live each time you run a scan. Price history is recorded whenever ShelfAware detects a change, with a minimum interval of 24 hours for new products and 14 days for established ones to avoid noise.

Yes. Scanning prices and checking in-store stock requires no account. You only need to sign in to set price drop alerts, which require an email address to send notifications to.

After scanning a product, tap the bell icon to set a target price. You can choose a specific amount, use a percentage shortcut (−5%, −10%, etc.), or set it to the all-time historic low. ShelfAware checks all active alerts every few hours and sends you an email the moment a price at any nearby store drops to or below your target.

Yes, the Deals page (shelfaware.ca/deals) shows live clearance items at 40% off or more, refreshed daily, currently covering Canadian Tire, Home Depot, and Best Buy. Each deal lists the discount percentage, the price range across hundreds of store locations, the in-stock store count, and exactly which stores have the lowest price, so you can find the best deal near you, not just a national average. It's free to browse with no account required.

ShelfAware covers all of Canada: wherever the supported retailers have stores. This includes major cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Winnipeg, as well as smaller markets served by Canadian Tire, Walmart, and Home Depot.

Yes, ShelfAware is completely free to use. Scanning prices, viewing price history, and checking in-store stock are all free with no account required. Price alerts are free with a sign-in.

ShelfAware is built from the ground up with a modern interface and real-time data pipeline. It covers retailers like Canadian Tire, Princess Auto, Canada Computers, and Visions Electronics that many other trackers don't support. Price history, in-store stock, and price alerts are all available in one place with a clean, fast experience designed for how Canadians actually shop today.

StockTrack has been a familiar name in Canadian deal-hunting circles since around 2018, checking in-store stock through its website and browser extension (and some retailers, like Walmart, no longer report stock through it; it doesn't cover Costco at all). ShelfAware covers 13 retailers including Costco, Princess Auto, Canada Computers, Visions Electronics, and Home Hardware, and adds interactive price history charts that show a product's all-time low, plus free email alerts that fire the moment a price drops at a store near you, available as a web app or through our own free Chrome extension. See the full ShelfAware vs StockTrack comparison.

Some retailers (like Best Buy and Walmart) have a single national price that applies both online and in stores. Others (like Canadian Tire) can have store-specific pricing and promotions. ShelfAware shows the in-store price for each specific location when available.