yes, this is exactly why i built pricesquirrel too, to see the price gaps between countries since i'm finnish and its often cheaper to buy from germany..
i built a price tracker for EU PC hardware because I was tired of overpaying
(www.pricesquirrel.com)
fair, and honestly a fair correction on the causal claim, I showed that consolidation exists and that a price gap exists, but I didn't actually isolate consolidation as THE cause versus other factors (retailer density generally, market size, logistics, etc). Given how many other stores exist like you said, it's likely one factor among several, not necessarily the main driver. should have been more careful with that framing rather than implying a direct causal link I can't actually prove with this data. good catch.
from what I've tracked, it lines up with the broader chip shortage story, component costs have gone up across the GPU supply chain. on top of that, the RTX 5090 specifically has extra demand from people running local AI models since it's the best consumer card with 32GB VRAM, so it's pulling on both gamers and AI/compute users at once.
hahah thanks, tried to be creative
it's mainly because of competition differences. for example france: LDLC buys up most of smaller retailers and that's why they can keep the margins high and competition is minimal, so there's no competition to drive prices down
thank you, appreciate it! in the future probably yes. (currently it's strictly for EU to see price gaps between countries)
hehe, pystyy muuttamaan asetuksista englanniksi :) käännökset on tehty tekoälyllä, joten siks ne on aika huonoja. en nyt ensisijaisesti kohdista suomeen tota työkalua koska käyttäjävolyymi on niin matala niin en oo jaksanu korjailla vielä kun solona tota sivua kehitän
Got frustrated with how inconsistent hardware pricing is across EU countries, no real transparency, no easy way to compare, retailers just charge whatever they can get away with depending on the market. So I built a tool myself to track it properly instead of relying on retailers to be honest about it.
Started with GPUs, now covers RAM, CPUs, and SSDs too, 158 GPUs, 190 RAM kits, 31 CPUs, 75 SSDs across 20+ European stores, updated every 6 hours.
Average price premium over the cheapest EU country, same GPU models:
Italy: +25.3% Poland: +21.3% Finland: +12.1% Spain: +11.9% Belgium: +11.5% France: +11.4% Austria: +8.0% Netherlands: +7.6% Germany: +2.5% Germany is consistently the cheapest, likely thanks to genuine retailer competition (multiple stores fighting for the same customers) rather than any single company just being generous.
Some real gaps in the live data right now, same exact product:
ASUS ProArt RTX 5080 16GB OC: €2,050 (FR) vs €1,805 (DE), €245 gap Gigabyte RX 9070 XT Aorus Elite: €1,077 (FR) vs €940 (DE), €136 gap Even after €15-20 shipping from Germany to elsewhere in the EU, the savings are usually significant. Still within the EU, so no customs fees, same 2-year legal warranty no matter where you buy.
No ads, no signup, no tracking of you, just the data: pricesquirrel.com
Source isn’t open, but happy to answer questions about the methodology if people are curious. Open to feedback or store suggestions too. :)
to clarify: for each GPU, whichever country has the lowest price for THAT specific model scores 0% for it. Germany doesn't win every single model, but wins the most, and averages out to just 2.5% above the floor across all 147 comparable GPUs, that's what "consistently cheapest" means here: usually at or very near the floor, not literally winning every single comparison.
and thanks for the Computeruniverse suggestion too. German stores have a good scrape-protection, so thats why some good ones are missing from the tracker. But will add it in the future for sure! :)
GPU and RAM prices have both risen ~19% across the EU over the past 1-2 months, verified with fixed-basket price tracking
(www.pricesquirrel.com)
GPUs: +19.2% in one month
Fixed basket of 176 GPU models, tracked at 3+ retailers daily for 30 days (July 15 - August 14), to rule out the distortion that happens when cheap cards sell out and skew a simple daily average.
- July 15: €808.57 average
- August 14: €963.56 average +19.2%, same 176 cards throughout
Not a single spike, started climbing around July 24-25 and has been steady since. Consistent across markets too: Germany +19.6%, France +18.1%.
RAM: +18.6% over two months
Same fixed-basket approach: 112 DDR5 kits in stock at 2+ retailers on both June 19 and August 18, tracked daily throughout.
- June 19: €666.80 average
- August 18: €791.14 average +18.6%, same 112 kits throughout
This one had a sharper inflection point: flat through most of June, then a sudden +6% overnight jump on July 1 (checked individual SKUs to rule out a data glitch, it's real, looks like a manufacturer-side price change hitting multiple retailers the same day), followed by continued climbing through mid-July, then a slower steady rise since.
Methodology, for both: price is the average across whichever 2-3+ retailers carried a given product on a given day, not the single cheapest price, and not a blended average across a shifting product list, a fixed set of SKUs, verified daily, same products at the start and end of the period.
Data limitation: RAM figures are consumer DDR5 desktop kits only
Independent corroboration: German tech outlet Heise recently reported a similar ~20% GPU price increase: https://www.heise.de/news/Grafikkarten-werden-nochmals-rund-20-Prozent-teurer-11409262.html
Data source: PriceSquirrel, tracking hardware prices across 20+ EU retailers.