How to Use Google Sheets as an Amazon Price Tracker
The prices of products listed on various Amazon shopping websites may vary every day and a simple Google Spreadsheet can help you monitor these price fluctuations via email. Just add the Amazon items in a spreadsheet and you’ll automatically get email alerts when their prices change on Amazon. You’ll thus never miss the deal again.
Track Amazon Prices with Google Sheets
The Amazon Price Tracker is easy to configure. All you have to do is add the links (URLs) of Amazon product pages inside a Google Spreadsheet. You can add monitor products across all Amazon.* websites. Here are the steps involved:
Step 1: Generate Amazon Access Keys
Open the Amazon Associates website and sign-in with your Amazon account. Next, click the Tools menu, choose Product Advertising API from the dropdown (link) and choose Manage Your Credentials under the Add Credentials section. Amazon will create an Access Key ID and a Secret Key that you’ll need in the next step.
Step 2: Copy the Google Spreadsheet
Click here to copy the Price Tracker Google Sheet in your Google Account. DO NOT change the layout of the Google Sheet as it may break the tracker.
Now all you have to do is enter Amazon product URLs in column A of the Google Sheet, one per line. For instance, here’s the Amazon URL for iPad
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K344J3N
The URL contains the 10 digit ASIN code which is used by the Google Sheet to identify the specific Amazon product you are looking to monitor for price fluctuations.
In addition to prices, the Google Sheet lists several other useful attributes of Amazon Products including merchant’s name, sales rank, overall savings, Prime eligibility and whether the product qualifies for free shipping.
Step 3: Set Price Thresholds (optional)
With the Price Tracker, you can also set price thresholds for specific products and get automatic email alerts when the target price is reached. For instance, you can choose to receive alerts when the iPad price drops by 20% of the initial value. Or you can set a target price (alert when iPad drops to $399) and get automatic alerts when the price drops on Amazon.
To specify a threshold for any product, go to column B of the product row and enter the amount or percentage values as shown in the screenshot above.
Step 4: Configure Price Tracker inside Google Sheet
Inside the Google Sheets, go to the Amazon Price Tracker menu (near the Help menu) and choose Configure. You may have to authorize the Pricer Tracker script once to connect to Amazon API and send email alerts.
Next enter your access keys, your email address and the time when you wish to receive the email alerts. Click Save to initialize the Amazon Price Tracker.
That’s it. You’ll receive a daily email digest with the price fluctuations as shown below.
Monitor Amazon Products for Price Drops
Amazon Price Tracker can monitor prices of all products (including Kindle ebooks) listed on Amazon.com and the country-specific websites including amazon.fr, amazon.de, amazon.es, amazon.ca, amazon.it, amazon.in, amazon.co.jp and amazon.co.uk.
Also, you can add more Amazon URLs, or delete existing products, from the Google sheet and the script will automatically pick the changes in the next run. And if you ever wish to stop receiving those email alerts, just choose the Stop Tracking option from the Price Tracker menu in the same Google sheet.
The tracker is written in Google Scripts and uses Amazon’s Product Advertising API to fetch the latest prices at fixed intervals. The Price Tracker is completely free but if you chose to upgrade to premium, you get technical support and get to use your own Amazon Associate tags.
Amit Agarwal
Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion
Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.
Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory