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How old is the price you are reading?

Every figure on this site carries the month it was read. This page says how old those readings actually are, and what happened to the ones that were walked a second time.

Ruth Alvarez5 min read
475 recorded prices, by the month each was readSeptember 202669August 2026384July 202616June 202660 rows carry no reading date at all.

Every figure on this site carries the month it was read, and that is not decoration. A published price in this market is a snapshot of a page that its owner can change without telling anyone, and the interval between the reading and your reading of it is the part nobody usually discloses. This page puts a number on that interval for our own data — the same instinct behind counting what sellers leave out in what sellers will not tell you, turned around and pointed here.

How old the corpus is

There are 475 recorded prices behind the comparisons on this site, covering 475 sellers. 0 of them carry no reading date. 69 were read in September 2026, and the remaining 406 are older. That second group is the honest weakness here, and it is stated rather than averaged away.

The oldest rows are the ones to treat most carefully. A figure read several months ago has had several months in which a promotion could end, a fee could be added, or a product could be withdrawn — and none of those produce a notification.

Why the date has to be visible

A comparison site that publishes a figure without saying when it was read is asking you to trust an unstated interval. The figure may have been collected this week or last year, and nothing on the page distinguishes the two. Attaching the month is the cheapest honest thing a publisher can do, and it is the reason every price on this site carries one.

It also makes the site checkable. If a figure here is wrong, the date says which page to go and look at, and the corrections record says what has already been found wrong and fixed. A claim that cannot be checked against its own source is a claim that has to be taken on faith, which is what this whole category runs on.

What to do with this as a reader

Read the date beside any figure here, and treat an older one as a lead rather than a price — something to confirm on the seller’s own page before it decides anything. That advice applies with more force to the figures most likely to move: promotional rates, first-month offers and anything described as starting at.

The structural version of the same problem is that a headline can be true and still not be the bill, which is counted in when the headline is not the bill and in what sellers will not tell you. A fresh reading of a misleading figure is still a misleading figure.

Frequently asked

Why does a price need a date?
Because a seller can change its page without telling anyone. The interval between the reading and your reading of it is the part that decides whether a figure is still true, and it is the part most comparison sites leave unstated.
Are older figures wrong?
Not necessarily, but they are less reliable. When rows here were walked a second time, more of them had moved down than up, and the median move was substantial in both directions.
What should I do with an older reading?
Treat it as a lead rather than a price. Confirm it on the seller's own page before it decides anything, especially where the figure is promotional or described as starting at.

Sources

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