Homeprice

Every price, in your money

Homeprice converts prices on any website into the currency you actually think in, as you browse. Hover any of them to see the original.

It also tells you something no other converter does: how much of that price is tax you can claim back when you leave the country.

Coming to the Chrome Web Store See how it works
  • The Homeprice welcome screen straight after installing. A Japanese price of twelve thousand yen is written as 76 dollars 11, with 69 dollars 19 tax free beside it, and a button that says start browsing.

    Two questions and you are set. Which money you think in, and where you live. The second one is what keeps the refund maths honest.

  • A Uniqlo Japan listing page in Japanese where every product price reads in US dollars, each one followed by a smaller tax-free figure.

    Then you just shop. Uniqlo Japan, priced in dollars, in place, as you scroll.

  • The same shop with the pointer resting on a price. A dark tooltip gives the real price of 1,990 yen, about 12 dollars 62, the rate it used, and roughly 1 dollar 15 back as tax.

    Hover to see the original. ¥1,990, the rate it used, and the $1.15 Japan gives back on the way out.

The same shelf, twice

One row of T-shirts on Uniqlo's Japanese store. Drag the handle to put the yen back, and change the currency to whichever one you think in. Nothing else on the page moves, because nothing else is Homeprice's business.

The Uniqlo Japan listing untouched, with its four prices in yen: 1,290 yen, 990 yen, 1,500 yen and 990 yen.
The same listing with Homeprice running, the same four prices reading 8 dollars 18, 6 dollars 28, 9 dollars 51 and 6 dollars 28.
JPY · Japanese yen
Only the price line changes. The photographs, the Japanese product names and the star ratings are the same pixels on both sides.

What it actually does

Most currency converters stop at the exchange rate. That is the easy half of the question when you are shopping abroad.

It reads prices the way people write them

Comma grouping, dot grouping, Indian lakh grouping, three decimal dinars, symbols before and after the number, and currency words in their own script. A Thai shop showing 490.00 บาท works as well as one showing $19.99.

It works out what a symbol means

A bare dollar sign is eleven different currencies. Homeprice checks the currency code, the shop's own product data, the domain, and the country in the address before deciding. When it is still guessing, it says so.

It knows the refund rules

More than 60 countries, with the tax rate, the minimum spend, whether the tax comes off at the till or on departure, and roughly what the refund operator keeps. It shows the price after the refund, not the headline rate.

It copes with real shops

Prices split across several elements, hidden copies kept for screen readers, items that load as you scroll, and sites that rebuild themselves after you touch them.

Tax you are probably leaving behind

Most countries refund sales tax to visitors. On a shelf price abroad that is often somewhere between 5 and 25 percent, sitting there unclaimed because working out whether it is worth the paperwork is tedious at the moment you are deciding.

Homeprice does that arithmetic for you, on every price, before you buy. It is honest about the parts that catch people out.

  • The operator takes a cut. The headline VAT rate is not what lands back in your account, so the estimate is net of typical fees.
  • Minimum spends are per receipt. A cheap item still counts towards one, so it is marked rather than hidden.
  • The paperwork happens at the till. You need the form issued in store, against your passport, and the goods have to leave with you. An online order delivered locally earns nothing back.
  • Some countries have no scheme at all. Homeprice says so instead of quietly showing you a number.

These are estimates from published scheme rules. They are a guide for deciding whether something is worth buying, not a quote. See the terms for the full version of that sentence.

It does not watch you

No account, no sign-up, no analytics, no ads, no tracking of any kind. The pages you visit never leave your browser. Prices are found and converted on your own machine.

The only request Homeprice makes is asking a public endpoint for exchange rates, about every six hours. That request contains nothing about you or the page you are on. It works offline too, and tells you when it is using stored rates rather than passing old numbers off as current.

This site has no trackers on it either, which felt like the least it could do.

Read the privacy policy

Worth knowing before you install

  • It changes what you see, never what you are charged. Checkout still happens in the shop's currency at your card's rate, which will differ from the mid-market rate shown here.
  • It reads text. Prices drawn inside images or a canvas are invisible to it.
  • You can switch it off per site. Add your bank, or anywhere you would rather see untouched numbers. Alt+Shift+P toggles the current page.
  • The tax-free price can sit inline as well. The screenshots here keep the page tidy with only the converted price, but Homeprice will put the after-refund figure beside every one if you would rather see it without hovering.