Capital One Shopping Review

We Investigate: Capital One Shopping Review 2022: Can Capital One Save Money?

Capital One Shopping Review
Illustration: The Money Manual
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Everyone likes saving money, right?  Luckily for us, there are plenty of tools to help consumers save money on the everyday things that they buy.  One of those tools is Capital One Shopping.  This is a service owned by Capital One dedicated to helping its members find great deals through shopping rewards, comparing prices of items to other websites, and more. 

Maybe you’ve never heard of Capital One Shopping, or maybe you’re on the fence.  Read on for our extensive review that outlines everything you need to know about Capital One Shopping.

Capital One Shopping At A Glance

What Is Capital One Shopping? 

Capital One Shopping is a free browser extension and mobile app that helps you save money on online purchases. It offers users a variety of tools to help them maximize their savings, such as a shopping portal, coupon codes, Amazon price comparison, and more. 

Capital One Shopping is free to use, easy to set up, and best of all, you don’t need to be a Capital One credit card holder to sign up.  Capital One Shopping is available for both Capital One cardholders and Non-Capital One cardholders.  

How Does Capital One Shopping Shopping Credits Work? 

Shopping Credits are a percentage of your purchase that you earn back. You can be redeem shopping credits for gift cards to retailers like Walmart, Nordstrom, Sephora, Nike and dozens more through Capital One Shopping in a few different ways.  In this section, we’ll go over every way you can earn and save money using Capital One Shopping.

Download The Extension On Your Browser

None of your savings will start until you get the extension.

Get Started With Capital One Shopping

Price Drop Watchlists

If you find an item that you want, but don’t necessarily want to buy it at its given price, you can add that item to your watchlist.  Capital One Shopping will then monitor the price of that item for up to 60 days, and notify you when there is a drop in price. 

This can come in especially handy during the holiday season when there are all sorts of sales and deals going on.  Adding some items to your watchlist can save you a ton of time since you won’t have to keep manually checking the price.

Capital One Shopping Credits

Capital One Shopping credits are very similar to the cash back deals offered by Rakuten.  All you have to do is click the activate button when you are shopping on an eligible site, and you will automatically earn a predetermined percentage of the money you spend in the form of Capital One Shopping credits.  These shopping credits can then be redeemed for gift cards from your favorite retailers, like Target, Walmart, Amazon, and more.

Coupon Codes

Much like its competitor Honey, the Capital One Shopping extension will automatically apply coupons for you at checkout to help you save some extra money.  This will save you the agony of having to search “(insert store name) coupon codes” and manually entering codes at checkout.  With the Capital One Shopping extension, all you have to do is click one button, and countless coupon codes will be tested, and the one that saves you the most money will automatically be applied.

Price Comparison Tools

When the Capital One Shopping extension is added to your browser and it sees you’re looking at an item that has a listing at another retailer with a lower price, it will alert you to tell you there is a better deal.  This is especially helpful on sites like Amazon and eBay when there are countless sellers selling the same product, but with different terms and shipping rates/times.  

Read more about how the Capital One Shopping extension works to compare prices in seconds.

The product search feature comes in handy if you’re shopping for an item that is oftentimes heavily discounted by a given retailer.  Manually searching several retailer websites, and comparing pricing can be boring, time-consuming, and tedious, but Capital One Shopping works to alleviate this. With Product Search you can search for a product, such as “airpods” and Capital One Shopping will aggregate countless different listings for airpods.  They will show you various deals, and the percentage of shopping credits you can earn.

Is Capital One Shopping Legit? 

When you’re trusting sensitive information, like your personal data, and browsing history to a company, questioning whether or not they’re legitimate is a completely valid concern.  When it comes to Capital One Shopping, you’ve got a few things to worry about.  They are, of course, owned by Capital One, one of the leading credit card issuers in the United States.  So it’s safe to say that you can trust them with your personal data as much as any similar established major financial institution.  

Additionally, there are tens of thousands of happy customers that have left glowing reviews for Capital One Shopping.  In our next section, we’ll go over three different reviews from customers that have varying opinions with regard to the platform.  Seeing this information will help you make a more informed decision on whether or not to use the platform.

Real User Reviews For Capital One Shopping 

As important as it is to read blog posts on different shopping portals, it’s also important to take a look at the reviews that these portals are receiving.  Reviews offer up the unadulterated raw emotion of everyday users.  Although the vast majority of reviewers were incredibly happy with Capital One Shopping, not everyone was.  This is why we’ve grabbed some recent reviews from folks with varying perspectives on Capital One Shopping, and compiled them below.

This reviewer seems to share the same sentiment that most users have.  Overall, people seem to really enjoy using Capital One Shopping.  Most users say that it’s saved them a good bit of money, with very little time commitment.

5-star Capital One Shopping reviewer says it's very easy and they always save money.

The next reviewer claims that Honey (one of the similar online price comparison tools) saves them more money than Capital One Shopping.  Although this may be true, it’s important to remember that the efficacy of a given extension can vary heavily depending on which site you’re shopping on.  

2-star Capital One Shopping reviewer says they prefer Honey.

Our last reviewer seems to be having some issues with Capital One Shopping, claiming that it states another site has a better price when in reality it doesn’t.  Once again, your experience will probably vary heavily, depending on where you shop and the items you’re looking to buy. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t find a good deal, just that there’s sometimes a technical glitch that needs to be fixed.

1-Star Capital One Shopping reviewer says the extension is not working correctly to flag cheaper prices.

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Capital One Shopping Pros And Cons 

While Capital One Shopping is a great service that can save users a good bit of money, it does have its drawbacks as well.  Below we’ll outline some of our favorite (and least favorite) things about Capital One Shopping.


Pros
  • You don’t have to be a Capital One Cardholder to receive shopping rewards
  • Easy to use interface that doesn’t make you jump through hoops
  • Wide array of gift card options, including some of your favorite retailers, like Walmart, Target, and Amazon
  • Capital One Shopping is owned and backed by Capital One, meaning it’s likely not going anywhere anytime soon
Cons
  • Capital One Shopping is only available for US residents
  • You can only cashout via gift cards – no ACH transfers, or PayPal/Venmo transfers
  • Mobile app versions are not as robust as the chrome extension
  • Some users report having better luck with other money saving chrome extensions, such as Honey or Rakuten

Bottom Line: So, Can Capital One Shopping Actually Save You Some Money?

Capital One Shopping is an incredible way to save money on things that you would be buying online anyway.  It takes very little time to set up, and once it’s set up, it practically runs on autopilot, saving you money in the background. 

Gone are the days when you spend dozens of minutes looking for coupon codes every time you want to buy something from online retailers.  Capital One Shopping handles this and much more, with very little time commitment on your end.  This is what makes Capital One Shopping such a great product in our eyes.  

However, it’s always worth noting that sometimes technical errors can happen, so it’s best to keep an eye on it and not to trust it blindly. If you’re looking to get a solid comparison, check out our recommended cash back apps and see which ones you can add to your regular shopping routine to help you save money.

FAQs

We know that we just threw a lot of information at you, and you’ve probably still got some questions about Capital One Shopping and its offerings.  In an effort to shed some more light on the service, we’ve answered some of the most commonly asked questions below:

How does Capital One make money on Capital One Shopping?

Capital One Shopping makes money from affiliate marketing.  When you click on the links from their shopping portal, they make a commission that they then split with you.

Is Capital One really Capital One Shopping?

Although Capital One, the credit card issuer, does own Capital One Shopping, you don’t need a Capital One credit card or bank account to use the Shopping application.  From this standpoint, Capital One Shopping is a completely separate entity.

Does Capital One Shopping cost anything?

Capital One Shopping is completely free to use for both Capital One cardholders and Non-Capital One cardholders.  It makes money through the use of affiliate marketing, so they may be compensated when you make a purchase through their portal, or when they refer you to a vendor with a cheaper listing price.

Is There A Downside To Capital One Shopping?

There aren’t very many downsides to using Capital One Shopping.  It has plenty of tools to help its users save money on the things they buy every day.  The only downside we can think of is that rewards can only be redeemed in the form of gift cards, which can be a limiting factor for some.

How To Use Capital One Shopping On Amazon?

Capital One Shopping is easy to use on Amazon.  All you have to do is enable the browser extension, and tell Capital One Shopping whether or not you are an Amazon Prime Member. This helps more accurately compare pricing and shipping times because they vary depending on whether or not you are a Prime member.  

After that, all you have to do is shop for your favorite items, and Capital One Shopping will compare pricing to thousands of other sellers on Amazon, as well as other platforms, such as eBay.  You can also use Capital One Shopping to track the price of specific items over time, so you can be notified whenever there is a price drop.

Is There A Capital One Shopping App?

For those that prefer to do their shopping on their phones, Capital One Shopping does have apps on both the Google Play Store as well as the Apple App Store.  Both versions of their app have glowing reviews from users and are incredibly helpful when it comes to shopping on the go.

Get Capital One Shopping & Start Saving Now

There are tons of other apps that pay cash that we think you’ll want to check out. And if you’re really into doing surveys for cash or playing games on your phone for some extra money in your pocket, we’ve got you covered.