CheckBeforeYouShop

Blog · Portal comparisons · August 25, 2026

Cashback Monitor alternative: is today's rate good?

By Patrick · 2 min read

Cashback Monitor shows you today's rate across dozens of portals. Here's what it does well, where it stops, and how a rate-history tool fills the gap.

Looking for a Cashback Monitor alternative? If you're into shopping portals, you already know Cashback Monitor. It's the OG: type a store, see its rate across dozens of portals, side by side. It's genuinely useful, it's fast, and it's been the default for years. We use it too.

So why build something else? Because a comparison table answers one question, what's the rate right now?, and we kept wanting the answer to a second one: is that rate any good?

What Cashback Monitor does well

Credit where it's due. Cashback Monitor's core table is excellent: broad portal coverage, a clean side-by-side, and it's been reliable for a long time. If all you need is "who pays the most for this store today," it delivers, and you don't need anything fancier.

Where a history-first tool picks up

What a live table can't tell you is whether today's number is high, low, or average for that store. A store showing 6% might be having its best week of the year or its worst, and the table looks identical either way.

That's the gap this site is built around:

  • A record of what "normal" looks like. Because the rates are tracked over time, "typical" is a measured range, not a guess.
  • A rate highs page. One place to see every store sitting at an unusually high rate right now, the closest thing to a "buy this week" list.
  • A verdict, not just a number. Every store gets one sentence on whether the current rate beats its own history (how we work that out):
Home Depot · today's verdict

11% on TopCashback is within Home Depot's typical range (10–11%).

  • It's an "up to" rate. The headline number may only apply to some categories.

as of Aug 27, 2026 · updates automatically

Here's what that record actually looks like for one store. Home Depot on Active Junky went from 6% to 12%, dropped to 1%, then climbed back to 8%, all inside about a month:

Rate history
12%1%

tracking since Jul 12, 2026 · 4 recorded changes · now 8% · early data · updates automatically

A live table would have shown you 8% today and nothing before it. The chart is why "is 8% good?" has an answer.

Neither tool replaces the other. A live table is great for a quick check. A history is what tells you whether to pull the trigger or wait.

The catch

We'll be straight about the trade-off: on portal count, Cashback Monitor and CheckBeforeYouShop are basically tied today, its own homepage lists 42, and we track 42. On stores, we've actually got more: its own homepage says 15,000+, and we track 49,481. Where it still wins is tenure. Cashback Monitor has been recording rates for years; our own history starts in July 2026, so a "typical" range here is a young, thickening picture, not a deep one yet. If you want a decade of data behind a number, that's the reason to keep Cashback Monitor open in another tab. If you want to know whether today's rate is actually good, that's the reason this site exists.

Try it on a store you actually shop: every store we track has a page with what each portal pays, plus a verdict on whether today's rate is any good (here's how that call gets made). Compare that to what Cashback Monitor shows you, and see which question you care about more.

Some links on this site may earn us a referral bonus. That never changes the rates we show or how we rank them. Details