How we track portal rates (and show the whole history)

Many cashback comparison tools are a snapshot: they show you the rate right now and move on. We read each shopping portal's own rate pages and record every change, so we can tell you whether "right now" is actually any good. Here's how that works, store by store.

What we track, and how often

We check most portals every 6 to 24 hours, matched to how often each one moves, and a few of the slowest less often. We do it gently: we cache, we throttle, and we stay inside what each portal allows.

When a rate is different from what we saw last time, that's an event: a rate went up, went down, a store got added, or a store dropped off. You can see those events as we record them:

String enough events together and you get a history: that's what the "is this rate good?" verdicts on the site are built from.

What a cashback rate history adds up to

Here's what that looks like on one ordinary store. Nike sits on dozens of portals; these three cashback ones cover the same stretch of weeks:

BeFrugal · now 8%Rakuten · now 6%TopCashback · now 4%

tracking since Jul 11, 2026 · 103 recorded changes · updates automatically

Three lines, one store, the same weeks. A snapshot tells you what the rate is. A cashback rate history tells you where that rate sits.

The labels we put on rates (and why)

Rates on the site carry the context behind the number where we have it:

• Stale. If we haven't confirmed a rate recently, we say so, right on the number. Portals change rates without announcing it, so a rate we haven't re-checked lately might be wrong; we'd rather flag that than leave you guessing. The status page shows exactly how fresh every portal's data is right now.
• "Ends Oct 31". All portal rates are temporary, and they change constantly, so "limited time" on its own tells you nothing. A date does tell you something: where a portal publishes the day a boosted rate stops, we show it. Where it publishes none, we don't invent one.
• "Up to." When a portal advertises "up to X%," that headline often applies to a narrow category. We tag it so you don't read the ceiling as the floor.

Why we show each portal's own units, always

We show miles as miles and points as points, never silently converted into dollars. You'll never see us turn a mile or a point into a dollar figure and call it a fact: that conversion depends on how you redeem, and a mile is worth wildly different amounts to different people. Each rate keeps the unit its portal states: percent or flat dollars for cashback, miles per dollar or a flat number of miles for airline portals, points per dollar or a flat number of points for points portals. If you want a dollar comparison, turn on Rank by value and set your own point values; that's your assumption to make, out in the open, not something we fold into the number for you.

Why you should care

Because it changes the question you can ask. A snapshot answers "what's the rate?" A history helps you judge "should I buy now or wait?", which is the question you actually have.

This post is about the rate itself, the number on the page before you click. Rate history isn't price history: it shows what a store's cashback rate did, not what the product cost. What happens after you click, whether it sticks and how long the payout takes to land, is a separate kind of tracking: see the cashback tracking guide, are cashback portals safe? and how long cashback actually takes.

For the exact math behind the labels and the verdict box, how we decide a rate is good is the full reference. The founding story covers why the site exists at all. For using that history to time a big purchase, why rates change walks through it.

Try it yourself: browse every store we track, set an alert on one you're waiting on, or read how to tell if a rate is good in ten seconds.