Last updated January 2025
Our editors and researchers love to save money and time, and use a broad range of consumer-oriented websites and apps to do so. Have other resources to suggest? Share them with us.
BuyNothingProject.org and Freecycle.org connect people to share what they don’t need (furniture, baby clothes, garden pots, even a cup of sugar). This reduces waste and the need for new things to be manufactured and shipped, which saves energy and resources.
CamelCamelCamel.com provides price histories for items sold by Amazon. Knowing how low Amazon has gone helps determine whether a seemingly steeply discounted price is a real steal or a fake out.
CashbackMonitor.com reports which cashback shopping portals (Rakuten, BeFrugal, MrRebates, etc.) are giving the best rebates for online shopping. We use these portals—which give their users a cut of commissions they earn when they send customers to sellers—to grab additional discounts from retailers and travel-booking companies.
CertifiKID.com offers discounted admission to museums, shows, trampoline parks, and other family-friendly events and activities.
ConsumerReports.org continues to churn out sage advice and reliable, unbiased product reviews for everything from cars to curling irons.
ConsumerWorld.org was founded by our great friend and consumer warrior Edgar Dworsky. He is best known for exposing “shrinkflation,” which is when manufacturers cut costs (often sneakily) by decreasing the amount of product we get. The site also warns about fine-print loopholes and provides consumer news, scam alerts, and money-saving strategies.
CouponCabin.com, RetailMeNot.com, and Slickdeals.net are the best spots to search for online coupon codes. None of these websites is perfect—each often spits out expired codes—but we find it’s worth a few minutes of trial-and-error to plug in the discount codes they provide.
Deglaze.app sifts through the cooking sections of newspapers and magazines plus the social media accounts of famous chefs to help you figure out what to cook, make grocery lists, and organize recipes.
Duolingo.com gamifies learning 43 languages with short, cartoon-character-populated lessons.
Earth911.com provides details on how (and where) to safely dispose of or recycle hazardous household waste—paint, solvents, motor oil, pesticides, and more. For instructions on getting rid of unwanted electronics responsibly, visit Ban.org or SustainableElectronics.org. For local spots to drop off batteries and cellphones, visit Call2Recycle.org.
Fakespot.com helps online shoppers weed out fake reviews and scams. Copy/paste a product page URL into Fakespot and it will analyze customer reviews, filtering out suspected phony ones. (The website also offers a browser extension that scans reviews automatically as you shop online.) Fakespot then generates an adjusted star rating based on the number of bogus reviews it rejected. For example, Fakespot gave a women’s wristwatch on Amazon 2.5 stars (not the posted 4.5-star rating) after judging that only 72.5 percent of its reviews were real.
GetHuman.com helps consumers connect to live customer support quickly. It gives you the phone numbers for hundreds of companies and government agencies, plus discloses which buttons to press or what to say during prompts to talk to a real person.
Going.com was launched by Scott Keyes, a longtime low-airfare sleuth. The service sends emails when its staff finds flight deals, along with guidance on how long cheap fares are likely to last, effective travel dates, and how to book them.
JustWatch.com maintains a database of movies and TV shows, plus where you can stream them and for how much. We often save by finding stuff that is free to watch on lesser-known streaming sites.
Kayak.com remains our go-to airfare search site because it offers the best filters. You can search Kayak and zero in to book directly with airlines (third-party booking sites often create headaches), exclude dreaded basic economy fares, quickly toggle to compare prices for trips within a few days of your desired travel dates, add in costs for baggage and carry-ons, ignore bare bones carriers like Frontier and Spirit, and more.
Libbyapp.com, connects us with public libraries across the world to borrow millions of e-books and audiobooks. Public library websites offer many free other online resources, including access to pay-only websites.
LittleFreeLibrary.org maps locations of more than 175,000 of those cute stands where you can borrow or give books 24/7. It also sells stands, if you want to set up one yourself.
MindBodyonline.com is an app that lets you search for fitness classes. It’s especially helpful when traveling.
OpenTable.com and Resy.com provide easy ways to make restaurant reservations, but what we really like is their “notify” features, which let us know when coveted tables free up at high-demand spots.
PermissionSlipCR.com is an app developed by Consumer Reports that provides a one-stop spot to control which companies can collect, store, and sell your personal data. It continues to improve the service: You can now use it to tell hundreds of companies and more than 100 data brokers to stop sharing and reselling your data (which also helps protect you from identity theft). We urge everyone to use it.
Poshmark.com lets you buy and sell gently used clothes, shoes, and accessories. There are other good online secondhand clothing marketplaces, but this is our favorite.
Splitwise app works like a calculator, allowing groups to quickly divvy up and settle dinner checks and other expenses.
TheSeniorList.com provides a roundup of discounts available to people 55 and older.
Transit app assembles in one place schedules, fares, and directions for trains, subways, and buses for more than 150 mass-transit agencies worldwide. It also taps into transit systems’ data and collects feedback from its users to provide real-time updates about delays. And Transit (so far) provides an ad-free, privacy-respecting experience.
YouTube.com can be a godsend for DIYers. Not sure how to clean out a dryer vent? Can’t figure out how to change your windshield wipers? Can’t remember Julia Child’s tactics for spatchcocking a chicken? It’s all here. Just remember that, in addition to expert help, knuckleheads are free to post vids, too.
Several websites work hard to educate consumers on how to avoid scams, including IDTheftCenter.org, Fraud.org, BBB.org, and AARP.org.
