The 5 Best Amazon Arbitrage Seller Scanning Apps

Not all Amazon third-party sellers are into private labeling and importing. While others are invested in creating their own range of products, others are banking on premade ones that they buy at a discount.

This nifty business model of taking advantage of market price differences is called arbitrage. The concept is simple enough—buy something in bulk at a discounted price and sell it in another place for higher and keep the difference.

But while the concept is simple, getting into Amazon arbitrage is still a business that requires a degree of effort and a set of tools to keep everything going smoothly. While you’re inside the store rummaging through the clearance sale, you need an app that helps you make the decision of whether or not to buy a certain product faster.

In this article, we will look into the best scanning apps for Amazon arbitrage sellers and look at their pros and cons so you can choose which app fits you best.

#1Amazon Seller App

Let’s start with the most basic app you need. Even if you’re not into arbitrage, the Amazon Seller app is a necessity if you’re selling anything on Amazon. This is also the only free app on this list, so if you’re still starting out, consider this tool first.

What Works

The basics. The Amazon Seller app shows you the basic stuff such as the product’s sales rank, and the price of the item when they’re new or old.

It also tells you if the product is restricted and if so, what conditions they can be sold. Remember that just because an item is restricted on Amazon doesn’t mean that you absolutely can’t sell them. For some branded items, Amazon allows you to sell them used.

List on-the-go. The app is perfect for always-on-the-go sellers because it allows you to do more than make a buying decision. You can also immediately list the product on Amazon so that before the cashier can give you a total, you can have your listing ready.

Customers first. The Amazon Seller app also has a Response Needed tab where you can conveniently address buyer concerns. It shows you customer complaints and even intellectual property complaints so you can deal with them immediately.

Package Recognition. To use the app for scanning, all you need to do is find the barcode of the product you want information on and scan it. Just click on the camera icon in the upper right corner of the app. It will show you a list of the possible products that match the one you’re scanning. Some products come in packs of 6, for example. So you need to choose the one that matches exactly the product you want. This is also how it works for a lot of the other scanning apps.

Unlike most apps, however, another way to scan a product through the Amazon Seller app is by scanning the packaging itself. This may give less accurate results, however, so I recommend using the barcode instead.

What’s Lacking

No Keepa, camelcamelcamel. The Amazon Seller app is not connected to Keepa, a tool that shows you the product’s price and rank history. This is important to determine the highest and lowest prices the item was sold for and how it did over a certain period. Neither does it have camelcamelcamel integration, which shows you when prices drop, helping you decide when to buy.

Promotions not considered. Another problem with the Amazon Seller app is that it shows you only the lowest new and used prices of the product scanned. It could happen then that if another seller is running a promotion on the day you scanned the item, that you’ll get an unrealistically low number.

Excludes taxes. The app also doesn’t account for taxes, so despite taking the FBA fees into consideration, you can’t determine how much exactly you can profit from in selling the product on Amazon.

#2Scoutly

Formerly called FBAScan, Scoulty is a convenient tool for those who can’t seem to get a strong internet connection when scouting for products to sell.

What Works

Offline viewing. This app from ASellerTool allows database downloads and search for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. You can choose which database to download, either Books and Other Media or Non-Media.

This makes it faster to pull up the information of a certain product since it’s already available offline. You don’t need a wifi connection or a signal to scout for products, but you can still do so if you want. The live search mode does give more accurate current prices.

Set triggers. Aside from the fact that it shows the product’s Keepa chart, the best thing about Scoutly is it lets you set product-specific profit triggers. This means that you don’t have to use that many brain cells to determine whether to buy a product or not because the app will analyze the data for you and tells you when a product is worth it.

This comes handy if you want to hire people to scout for you. So instead of going to the store yourself, you can let someone else do it, and they will still be able to make the right decisions because of these profit triggers. It’s good to note that Scoutly allows you to hide the item’s price information so your employee can look for products for you without turning into your competitor.

What’s Lacking

Needs big storage space. If you want to download the database on Scoutly for faster scanning, you will need at least 2 GB of storage space. So make sure you’ve deleted all unnecessary selfies to make room for it.

Glitches. There are also issues regarding bugs in the system, so you might experience repeated crashes during scanning. When it happens often enough, this problem can defeat the advantage given by the faster data retrieval provided by the downloaded database.

No trial in Lite Plan. In terms of pricing, Scoutly does offer a 30-day free trial, but it’s only available for the Professional Plan. If you choose the Lite Plan, you have to pay immediately.

#3Scoutify 2

Scoutify 2 is an app that comes with an InventoryLab subscription, so you have to pay for that to get the app. InventoryLab is a useful tool that gives you information about your listings such as a breakdown of your FBA Transaction fees, disposal fees, etc. It also helps you analyze your profitability and track your expenses.

You can get a lot of use from InventoryLab and if you want to stick to this tool, then it’s best to use the scanning app that comes with it for easy integration.

What Works

Informative dashboard. When you open Scoutify 2 to scan a product, you will immediately appreciate the table that conveniently displays the offers for new, used, and FBA prices to easily compare them.

Calculate ROI. Scoutify 2 shows you the target cost per unit based on your preferred ROI. This necessarily means that the app already works in taxes so that you get a more or less accurate number.

Another cool thing about this app is that it flags items that meet your ROI and sales performance preferences. This makes it easier to make a decision on the go since the app tells you if the product has passed your standards.

Product information. Aside from the basic information you’d like to see in an Amazon scanning app, it also shows you the product’s expiration date (if applicable), its condition, and the tax rate. All these can be imported into your Buy Lists, making it easier to retrieve them later on.

What’s Lacking

No average sales rank. The biggest downside to Scoutify 2 is that it doesn’t show you the average sales rank of a product. This information is important since it gives you an overall picture of how the product is really performing in terms of sale by analyzing purchase history over a period of time.

Let’s say for example that you found a toy on clearance. It sells only an average of five times a year. It just happened that when you scanned the product, a purchase was made the day before. Since the sales rank drops after a sale, it can make you think that the product sells more often that it actually does.

This is important especially when you are into Amazon FBA. Remember that the longer your product sits in the warehouse, the higher your FBA fees will be. It might not be considered as a stranded inventory, but with the performance of the product overall, it might as well be.

For Professional sellers only. An important thing to consider about Scoutify 2 is the fact that it’s only available for Amazon Professional account sellers and not for those who avail of the Individual Plan. As such, you should be paying $39.99 monthly for the Amazon Professional Plan plus at least $40 (if you go for the InventoryLab annual plan) to use Scoutify.

And while both the monthly and annual plans have a free 30-day trial period, you can access only the last 60 days of your sales data while still on the free mode.

Things to Note

An important thing to consider about Scoutify 2 is the fact that it’s only available for Amazon Professional account sellers and not for those who avail of the Individual Plan. As such, you should be paying $39.99 monthly for the Amazon Professional Plan plus at least $40 (if you go for the InventoryLab annual plan) to use Scoutify.

And while both the monthly and annual plans have a free 30-day trial period, you can access only the last 60 days of your sales data while still on the free mode.

#4ScanPower

One of the most underrated Amazon arbitrage seller apps out there, ScanPower contains useful features that are not found on a lot of scanning apps.

What Works

ScanPower has six key features that separate it from the rest.

ScanPower Mobile and ScanPower Scout

First off, the ScanPower Mobile allows users to see live pricing data on Amazon. The items can be searched either through a barcode, by ASIN, ISBN, UPC, or by simply typing a keyword and searching for the product. You can also pull up the same set of data on a web browser using another feature, the ScanPower Scout. The latter provides unified sales rank and price history graphs so you can make a more informed decision.

ScanPower List and ScanPower Boxt

The ScanPower List, on the other hand, allows sellers to immediately create an Amazon listing and print the FBA label in one step. From here, you are ready to pack the item in a box and with the ScanPower Boxt feature, you can create box-level contents so that you’ll be able to print 2D barcodes of the box contents.

ScanPower Evaluate

Meanwhile, the ScanPower Evaluate calculates the net payout of each item from a list of products you can upload. You also can set the rules in evaluation to easily make a decision.

For example, you can program it to reject items that Amazon offers and accept items with a net payout of $15 dollars or greater. By analyzing the competitive landscape of Amazon, it’s much easier to separate worthy products from those that aren’t up to your standards.

ScanPower Report

Finally, the ScanPower Report provides a platform for detailed inventory management that includes FBA fees, taxes, shipping, and other expenses. With this feature, you can keep track of your cost of goods sold (COGS) and return on investment (ROI). It also has a useful filter function so you can arrange the data by date, category, or source.

What’s Lacking

Missing back button. You’d think that a relatively expensive app would have all the basic features. Unfortunately, the developers may have missed putting a back button on the search pages. This can be annoying since you have to rescan items to check the listings again.

For Professional sellers only. It’s also good to note that just like Scoutify 2, ScanPower does not work with an Amazon Individual account, so you’ll have to go for the Professional Plan to use this app’s features.

#5Profit Bandit

The last app on the list is from Seller Engine. Profit Bandit is an Amazon arbitrage scanning app that allows sellers to calculate profit based on multiple factors, determine which product has the Buy Box, and gives restricted item alerts. These features are discussed in detail below.

What Works

15 factors. Profit Bandit is that it takes into consideration 15 factors including the product’s weight, shipping rates, and cost of goods in determining the profit you can earn. It also provides a breakdown of how the app came up with the amount through a detailed calculation down to the penny.

Buy Box indicator. Perhaps the most useful feature of this app is that it allows you to see who has the Buy Box through an asterisk next to an offer. The Buy Box is not always given to the listings with the lowest price, so this data is useful to have.

And just like ScanPower, Profit Bandit shows you if you will be competing against Amazon for certain products.

What’s Lacking

Hard on your battery. You might as well carry a power bank with you when you’re scouting using Profit Bandit. And because it provides live Amazon data so they’re more accurate, you need to have a stable internet connection unlike Scoutly that you can use even offline. This reliance on signal availability is one of the factors that contribute to the power-hungry characteristic of the app.

Glitches. Just like most apps out there, Profit Bandit also experiences the occasional glitches. However, there are times when this app literally just stops working, so you might as well have a backup application just in case. (You can use the Amazon Seller app for this since it’s free.)

Conclusion

Amazon arbitrage as a business model is nothing more than buying a product for a low price and selling it somewhere else for a profit. However, doing the business, just like any other entrepreneurial endeavor, requires sellers to do the legwork.

Walking through the aisles of Target or Home Depot to find profitable items to sell is taxing physically and mentally. This is why you need the proper tools to help make the process easier.

Hopefully, this review helps in making the choice of finding the right app easier. If you have any other apps to recommend, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.