Amazon FBA Retail Arbitrage Scanner App Review
Two of my team members are now doing a quarter of their sourcing manually and they're on track to hit 130k profit this year. One amazon fba retail arbitrage scanner app made that possible. In this post I'm breaking down the app we use in store and the Chrome extension we use for online arbitrage at home.
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The short version: We switched from SellerAmp to Profit Go, part of the ProfitPath system, for both retail arbitrage and online arbitrage sourcing. It scans by EAN rather than product title, which means one accurate match instead of a list of guesses. Two of our team members have gone from 5% manual sourcing to 25% manual sourcing since making the switch, and we're saving around 15 hours a week, rising to 30 once it's fully rolled out across every marketplace.
Why We Made The Switch
We sell across the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and we did just under 2 million euros in revenue over the last 12 months. Before Profit Go, we used SellerAmp for scanning. It worked, but it was slow enough that manual sourcing barely made sense next to our automated tools.
The switch changed how much manual sourcing our team is willing to do at all. Two of our best people have gone from doing 5% of their sourcing manually to 25%, simply because they can move through five times as many products in the same amount of time.
Retail Arbitrage: Scanning In Store
The mobile app side of Profit Go is built for retail arbitrage. You're standing in a store, you scan the barcode, and the breakdown comes up straight away. Best Sellers Rank, sales per month, whether you're ungated, buy price, sell price, potential profit, margin, ROI, max cost, and break even, all in seconds.
You can also see what the same product sells for in other marketplaces, which opens up EU A2A opportunities. Buying in one country and selling in another is where most of our sales actually come from, so this matters more than people think.
The app also flags the buy box split. If Amazon holds more than 80% of the buy box I start questioning the product, and over 90% is usually a pass. Variations split with one click too, so you can see what percentage of sales each variant is actually holding.
Reverse Search And The WEEE Numbers Problem
Profit Go has a reverse search filter built into the app itself. While you're still standing in the store, you can check whether the same product is cheaper somewhere else, online or in another shop, and factor in any store discounts on the spot.
It also handles WEEE numbers, which stands for waste electrical and electronic equipment. If you sell electronics in Germany you need these numbers or you can't list at all. When we first moved to ProfitPath we had over 200 electronics listings in Germany that were blocked because we didn't have them. We added the numbers the next day and all 200 went live.
A Real Deal, Scanned Live
Here's an actual product I scanned in store while filming. Cost price was $7.99, selling price was $27, leaving a profit of $5.96 per unit at a 22% margin. It wasn't a huge seller, only around 20 sales a month, with a couple of extra sales showing in Italy and the Netherlands too. Two variations existed, black and white, with far more stock on the black.
Every number Profit Go has shown me has matched the Amazon fee calculator exactly, which is the whole point. A tool that gets the numbers wrong is worse than no tool at all, because you buy with false confidence.
The Quick Fire Scan Feature
When you're doing RA you want to get in and out of a store fast. Profit Go has a quick fire scan mode built for exactly that. It shows you the max cost you can pay for a product based on your own parameters, so you scan barcode after barcode without stopping to do maths each time.
If the shelf price comes in under the max cost, you stop and check it properly. If it doesn't, you keep moving. Speed is the whole game with RA, and the more products you can get through, the more good ones you'll find.
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Online Arbitrage: The Chrome Extension
The second half of Profit Go is a Chrome extension for online arbitrage. You browse any retail site, click the extension, and it pulls the product data straight onto the page. No tabbing back and forth between the store and Amazon.
We ran this live on Argos, opening a handful of listings and clicking through to Profit Go for each one. Some came back under our max cost and got binned in seconds. Others were worth a closer look. The whole point is saying no fast, so you have more time left for the products worth saying yes to.
Why EAN Search Beats Title Search
This is the single biggest reason we moved away from SellerAmp. Most scanning tools search by product title, and titles don't match cleanly across different retail sites. You end up with five or ten results and you have to guess which one is actually your product.
Profit Go searches by EAN, the barcode number itself, whenever the retail site has one listed. That gives you one exact match, not a list of maybes. On a site without an EAN, like The Entertainer in our test, you get the same messy multiple results you'd get from any competitor. When the EAN is there, Profit Go gets it right first time, every time.
Reverse Search Works For Online Arbitrage Too
Same feature as the in-store app, just built into the extension. You can check a product against other stores selling it cheaper, factor in a three for two deal or a discount code, and stack cashback or coupons on top of that. It's a second sourcing pass that costs you nothing extra in time.
Profit Go vs SellerAmp: What It Actually Costs
SellerAmp runs around $30 a month, close to 300 euros a year, and that's before you add ProfitPath's other tools on top. Profit Go is included free inside the full ProfitPath package, or under 20 euros a month standalone against roughly 25 euros for SellerAmp on its own.
Our subscription costs actually went down the year we switched, for the first time ever, because Profit Go replaced a separate paid tool rather than sitting alongside it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is an Amazon seller scanner app?
It's a tool that reads a product's barcode or EAN and instantly shows you sales rank, current pricing, fees, and estimated profit, so you can decide whether to buy it on the spot. Most retail arbitrage sellers use one on their phone in store. Some, like Profit Go, also come as a Chrome extension for scanning while you browse online.
What is the best Amazon FBA retail arbitrage scanner app?
It depends on what you need. If you want a tool that covers both in-store retail arbitrage and online arbitrage from the same account, Profit Go is built for that. If you only need in-store scanning, other apps like SellerAmp cover the basics, though matching accuracy tends to be weaker without EAN based search.
Is SellerAmp worth it for Amazon FBA?
SellerAmp is a capable scanner and plenty of sellers use it well. Our issue wasn't that it doesn't work, it's that it searches mostly by product title, which produces multiple possible matches rather than one confirmed product. That cost us time on every single scan.
How does a barcode scanner app calculate FBA profit?
It pulls the current Amazon selling price, subtracts FBA and referral fees, and compares that against the price you'd pay in store or online. Good ones show margin, ROI, and a max cost figure so you know your ceiling before you even pick the product up.
What's the difference between retail arbitrage and online arbitrage tools?
Retail arbitrage tools are built for scanning barcodes in a physical store, usually through a mobile app. Online arbitrage tools work as a browser extension so you can check a product's numbers while browsing a retailer's website. Profit Go covers both from the same subscription.
Does this connect to the alert system from earlier episodes in this series?
Not directly. Profit Go is for active scanning when you're the one searching, whether in store or online. It's a different workflow to the automated alert system covered elsewhere in this series, where deals come to you instead.
Two Things Before You Go
First, ProfitPath 28-day free trial. Double the standard trial. 10% off your first month.
Second, Join the AMZ Unleashed Discord free. Free community. Live sourcing sessions. Real deals walked through in real time.
Drop a comment below. What feature are you most excited to try? I read every one.
This is Episode 7 of the ProfitPath Deep Dive series.
Previous: Episode 6: Amazon FBA Discord Alerts: My Private Sourcing System
Next: Most Amazon Sellers Are Missing This Automation (Saves Us 30 Hours a Week)
See the full series: ProfitPath Deep Dive
This post is sponsored by ProfitPath. Using my affiliate link supports the channel and helps me keep making content like this for free.
