Retail arbitrage is based on a simple yet genius idea—find hidden deals and resell them for a profit. But simple doesn’t mean easy, and it can require some heavy lifting behind the scenes. Tracking prices and managing inventory can be unsustainable at the scale needed to make a business successful. To unlock the full potential of retail arbitrage, you need the right tools by your side.
Over 1.3 million sellers joined Amazon in December 2024 alone—that’s just one month’s worth of fresh competition. When you add in other retail arbitrage selling platforms like eBay, there are a lot of other merchants to beat.
Without retail arbitrage apps that help you automate and scale your operations, you risk losing market share and profits to missed deals, inefficient sourcing, and pricing errors. Different types of sellers need different types of tools, so it’s important to compare and select them based on the specific needs of your business.
What are retail arbitrage apps?
Retail arbitrage means finding low-cost products (on clearance, in thrift stores, at liquidation sales, etc.) to resell on marketplaces like eBay or Amazon. Retail arbitrage apps are tools that automate and support the workflows essential to this business model. These include tasks like sourcing profitable items, marketing product listings effectively, and facilitating back-end processes like inventory management.
Retail arbitrage sellers can choose from a few different fulfillment options depending on how hands-on they want to be, and there are apps to facilitate each one:
- Self-fulfillment: You buy and store the inventory and ship it to the customer.
- Third-party logistics: You partner with a third-party company to store and ship products on your behalf.
- Dropshipping: You don’t hold any inventory. Instead, dropshippers handle the marketing and promotional side; when a product sells, you purchase it from the retailer. Then, the retailer ships it directly to the buyer.
Benefits of retail arbitrage apps
- Maximize profitability: These apps help you find deals and provide crucial data on pricing trends, competitor pricing, and potential profit margins. This information empowers you to make informed decisions and set competitive benchmarks that maximize your earnings.
- Save time: Retail arbitrage apps automate repetitive processes to keep your business competitive, like searching for deals and checking possible purchases against current marketplace listings.
- Be more adaptable: Retail arbitrage apps make it easier to anticipate shifts in the market, prepare for seasonal trends, and take advantage of insights from data analytics on the fly.
4 types of retail arbitrage apps and their key features
You need various specialized retail arbitrage tools to keep your business competitive. It’s important to make a checklist of what you need each type of app to have. For example, are you looking for its integration potential with other platforms, automation capabilities (e.g., auto-listing features), or a clear dashboard?
Whatever your unique needs, these are the major software categories to know.
1. Dropshipping platforms
Retail arbitrage is a fantastic business venture for sellers seeking high returns, low cost of entry, and a piece of the pie in fast-paced eCommerce. Dropshipping stands out as a particularly enticing option because you don’t need to prepurchase and store inventory—meaning even lower costs of entry and even higher scalability potential.
Sellers who don’t want to handle physical inventory might choose dropshipping as their business model. The best automated dropshipping platforms include advanced features to handle inventory management processes, plus other innovative capabilities such as pricing calculators and IP scanners. You can choose a platform that goes further by automating tasks like product listing, repricing, and order tracking, significantly increasing efficiency and freeing up sellers to focus on marketing and growth.
2. Barcode scanners
Eagle-eyed retail arbitrage sellers often spot a bargain on the go, particularly those pursuing the self-fulfillment option. However, some sellers (like dropshippers who don’t handle physical inventory) won’t really need a barcode scanner. Barcode scanner apps let you use your smartphone to identify products for resale in real time simply by scanning barcodes with the camera. The app can then provide information about whether the item is eligible for resale, its sales and pricing history, competing sellers, and more.
3. Product research tools
Retail arbitrage sellers can use product research tools to find products with high profit margins and anticipate consumer trends. These apps can dive deep into the sales and price data associated with thousands of different products, supporting cost-effective purchasing strategies. You can consider integrating product research tools with the best sales enablement software to personalize your outreach based on product availability.
4. Revenue/pricing calculators
Sellers often find it challenging to maintain consistent profit margins when prices are always changing. Plus, products might be subject to a variety of fulfillment and delivery options. Calculator apps can help you optimize pricing strategies, define dynamic pricing rules, and determine the lowest-cost fulfillment option for any given order. All-in-one dropshipping platforms often include auto-repricing features, too, as we’ll explore below.
Top 8 retail arbitrage apps by category
Category 1: Dropshipping platforms
1. DSers
The DSers app is designed to automate various processes, including ordering and inventory management, for new dropshipping businesses. It is built around sourcing products from AliExpress and can integrate with Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, and other eCommerce platforms.
Best for: Dropshippers who want to sell on Wix.
Price: $15.90 to $499 per month, depending on the plan. They offer a free version.
Review: “DSers has a learning curve, especially for users who are new to dropshipping or using automation tools.”
2. Yaballe
The best way for retail arbitrage sellers and dropshippers to build a successful business is to choose an app like Yaballe that automates dropshipping operations like order fulfillment, IP violations, pricing, and more.
Yaballe is an all-in-one eBay dropshipping platform that automates sourcing and fulfillment from popular marketplaces like Amazon and AliExpress Designed to help sellers maintain a successful and sustainable presence on the online marketplace, Yaballe avoids flagging and traffic throttling by using a non-API interface, automatically scans your listings for restricted products, and provides self-service order management and return features for customers.
Retail arbitrage businesses can leverage Yaballe’s seller-friendly features, including:
- Auto-listing: List up to 10K new products to your store in one action, using a CSV file, easy copy-and-paste of your product IDs into the bulk list feature, or a Chrome extension.
- Auto-repricing: Control your profit and stock with advanced pricing auto-rules and a shipping fee calculator.
- Inventory management: Monitors product availability to align active items with inventory.
- Auto-ordering: Yaballe processes and fulfills thousands of orders via your Amazon buyer accounts, Yaballe’s accounts, or both.
- Analytics: Multi-store operations management is made easy with the unified daily reporting tools.
Best for: Launching or growing an Amazon-to-eBay dropshipping business.
Price: From $26 per month, depending on the plan. There’s a seven-day free trial and custom pricing options.
Review: “[Yaballe has] almost each and every feature required for any dropshipper.”
Category 2: Barcode scanners
3. Amazon Seller App
Amazon’s proprietary Seller app gives you some basic tools for managing the Amazon side of a retail arbitrage business. One of the main features is a barcode scanner that turns your device’s camera into an on-the-go price-checking and product-research tool.
Best for: Providing you with some basic, zero-cost functionality for portable barcode scanning.
Price: Free.
Review: “I use this app all day, but it needs more features.”
4. ScoutIQ
ScoutIQ’s solution is a book-scanning tool for Amazon sellers that provides information on sales history and other factors like resale value. Unique features include a downloadable database for offline scanning, customizable trigger settings to flag inventory, and a “speed mode” for rapid scanning. It’s a nice-to-have if you’re looking to grab a few bargains at the bookstore.
Best for: Self-fulfillment book resellers needing a tool to verify items before purchasing physical inventory.
Price: $10 to $44 per month, depending on the plan.
Review: “Easy to use and beautifully designed.”
Category 3: Product research tools
5. Zik Analytics
Zik Analytics offers tools for product research and competitor insights. This platform crunches your market data and provides readable visualizations that help you find trending products and make smart strategic decisions about managing your store.
Best for: Gaining high-level insights on your market/niche.
Price: $14.99 to $59.99 per month, depending on the plan. There’s a seven-day trial offer.
Review: “I mostly used it for product sourcing, and it helped me find a lot of products to add to my store.”
6. AMZScout
Focusing exclusively on Amazon, AMZScout’s AI-powered tool hunts down the best products, keywords, and suppliers for your Amazon business. While the product research features are useful for retail arbitrage sellers, this tool can also help you create, optimize, and promote your listings.
Best for: Granular product and seller information on Amazon.
Price: $59.99 per month, with a discount for yearly payments and a $1,599.99 “lifetime” plan.
Review: “The toolset is very comprehensive.”
Category 4: Revenue/pricing calculators
7. Amazon FBA Revenue Calculator
This calculator, another free Amazon app, allows you to compare the costs of various fulfillment methods in real time so you can choose the best option for your orders. Although this tool doesn’t have many sophisticated features, it does support bulk estimates for multiple products.
Best for: Amazon FBA sellers looking for a simple price comparison tool.
Price: Free.
Review: None found.
8. Sellerboard
Sellerboard is a price monitoring tool that offers a more precise view of pricing than Amazon FBA Revenue Calculator, but it lacks the advanced auto-repricing features that a dropshipping automation platform like Yaballe has. Sellerboard summarizes all relevant information on a user-friendly dashboard interface, helping you track and reduce the costs associated with purchasing and inventory.
Best for: Pricing insights to guide new sellers who are just starting out.
Price: $15 to $63 per month, depending on the plan. There is a discount for yearly payments and a one-month free trial offer.
Review: “It [is] a breeze to navigate through its features.”
Automated operations with Yaballe’s all-in-one platform
Finding the right software to support your business is essential, and sellers can go far with all-in-one dropshipping platforms like Yaballe. Yaballe eliminates the need for a patchwork of separate tools by integrating critical business functionalities into a single, streamlined platform. The intelligent automation features, durable fulfillment infrastructure, and unified management tools give you the competitive edge you need to scale your operations over time.
Yaballe automates order processing and fulfillment, meaning you can handle thousands of orders in a fraction of the time. Let Yaballe automatically source products from one or more suppliers, so you’ll always get the best products, lowest prices, and shortest delivery time. Plus, Yaballe automatically matches, uploads, and updates tracking numbers and shipping details from suppliers, keeping your end customers in the loop.
Want to stay in control? With Yaballe, you can track orders directly in the platform, change your settings at any time, and choose self-service order management.
Get in touch to see what Yaballe can do to grow your business.
