The short version

Real Deal Meter is a list of product deals. There are no accounts, no logins, no comments, no basket and no payments. We never ask for your name, and we ask for your email address only if you choose to get our weekly email — that list, and any email you send us, is the only personal information we keep, and none of it is for sale, rent or trade.

The one thing worth knowing: the outbound links are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, a retailer may pay us a commission. Section 4 explains what that means for your data.

1. Who runs this site

Real Deal Meter (realdealmeter.com) is run from the United States. Contact: help@realdealmeter.com.

2. What we don't collect

We don't collect your name, postal address, phone number, payment card or bank details, account credentials, or precise location. There is no login system and no comment system. The one thing we keep about anyone is the email address of a person who signs up for our weekly email, and the messages of a person who writes to us (Section 8).

3. What happens automatically when you visit

This site is hosted on Cloudflare Workers. Like any web host, Cloudflare receives your IP address and basic request information — browser type, the page requested, the referring page, the date and time — because the page cannot be delivered to you without it. Cloudflare handles this as our service provider, under its own data protection terms, and is contractually barred from selling or sharing it. We have not enabled log retention or log export, so we do not hold copies of those logs. We do look at the aggregate statistics Cloudflare makes from its traffic — see Section 7.

4. Affiliate links and commissions

This site makes its money from affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the retailer or its affiliate network may pay us a commission. You pay nothing extra. We currently take part in the AliExpress affiliate programme. We are also a publisher on CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction LLC), an affiliate network through which individual retailers decide whether to accept us; each of those retailers will be named here once it has. So far seven have: Soundcore (a brand of Anker Innovations) and Creality, both since 22 September 2026, Bluetti, since 23 September 2026, Parts Geek, since 30 September 2026, Aootek, since 12 October 2026, Abracadabra NYC, since 15 October 2026, and PartnerBoost – Amazon Marketplace, a programme of independent sellers on Amazon, since 22 October 2026. A link that goes through CJ passes through CJ's tracking servers on its way to the retailer. Aootek and the sellers in PartnerBoost's programme sell on Amazon, so their links end on Amazon's own pages, where Amazon's privacy notice applies. CJ explains what it collects, and how to opt out, in its privacy policies, and takes requests about your data at cj.com/dsr. We are a partner on impact.com (Impact Tech, Inc.) too, another affiliate network that works the same way; one retailer there has accepted us so far: ELEGOO, since 28 September 2026. A link that goes through impact.com passes through its tracking servers on its way to the retailer. impact.com describes what it processes for the retailers it works for in its privacy policy, and takes requests about your data at privacy@impact.com.

What happens when you click. The link takes you to the retailer's own site. At that point the retailer and its affiliate network set their own cookies, or pass a tracking identifier in the URL, so the sale can be credited to us. That happens on their sites, under their privacy policies — not here, and not by us. We can neither control nor change it.

What comes back to us is limited. Affiliate networks report clicks, orders and commission amounts. Those reports do not identify you by name, email or address. We never receive your payment information, and never a list of who bought what.

5. Cookies

We set no cookies of our own. There is no tracking pixel, no advertising tag and no fingerprinting script on this site.

Your browser does remember a few things for you, in local storage rather than in a cookie: whether you chose the light or the dark theme, whether you forced the mobile or the desktop layout, the date and time of your last visit, so the site can mark the deals added since then, and, if you voted on a deal, which way you voted on it, so its page shows your choice again. The first two hold one word each — light, dark, mobile or desktop; the third holds a timestamp; a vote holds up, down or gone and the reason you picked, if any. No identifier, nothing about you. They stay in your browser, and clearing your site data removes them; only the vote itself is sent, when you press the button (Section 7).

Picked for you. If you follow a shelf or a deal, your browser keeps that list — and, for a deal, its price on the day you followed it — so the home page can show them first and say how the price has moved since. In the United States your browser also remembers, for 30 days, the departments and shelves of the deal pages and shelves you open (their names and the dates, nothing else), and gives those a few points’ weight in the “Best right now” order. The Deal Meter itself never changes, and what a store pays us is never part of it. All of this stays in your browser: none of it is sent to us or to anyone, and we cannot see it. It is not remembered where your browser’s time zone is in Europe, or when your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, unless you turn it on. You can change it here at any time:

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For the length of a visit only (session storage, cleared when you close the tab), your browser also keeps which of the lines at the very top of the page you were shown, so it does not change from page to page.

Cloudflare may set a security cookie on its own account — __cf_bm, which separates automated traffic from human traffic, or cf_clearance if you are shown a security challenge. Those exist for security, not advertising, and are not used to build a profile of you. You can block or delete cookies in your browser's settings; nothing here depends on them.

6. Third-party tracking across other sites

California and Delaware law require us to tell you whether third parties may collect information about your activity over time and across different websites when you use this site. The answer is yes: the affiliate networks named in Section 4 do exactly that, from the moment you follow one of our outbound links. No script on this site tracks you across other websites before that click. Two kinds of request do leave this domain before then. The photos on the Store Specials shelf, on our brand lineup pages and in the stores' lists under the buying guides and on the category pages are loaded straight from the stores' image servers — AliExpress's own, and Shopify's (cdn.shopify.com), which serves the Bluetti, Creality, ELEGOO and Soundcore photos — so those companies see your IP address and browser details when the pictures load. They are third parties receiving something about you before you have clicked anything, so they are named here and in Section 10 rather than left out. And the Cloudflare Web Analytics script described in Section 7 is loaded from Cloudflare's own server, as is Cloudflare Turnstile if you press a vote button on a deal or the Subscribe button of our weekly email (also Section 7). Everything else — the pages, the typefaces and the photos of the curated deals — is served from this domain.

7. Analytics

There is one, and it comes from our host. There is no Google Analytics, no tag manager and no advertising or cross-site tracking, but Cloudflare, which hosts this site, adds its Web Analytics script to every page. It reports totals: which pages were viewed, which site visitors arrived from, their country, whether they used a phone or a computer, their browser and operating system, and how quickly pages loaded. Cloudflare says the script uses no cookies or local storage to track visitors and does not fingerprint them. We see only those totals — in Cloudflare's dashboard, and on a private page of our own that reads them from Cloudflare — and keep no record of any individual visitor. We also keep daily totals of the requests Cloudflare's security features blocked, without IP addresses. And we count clicks on our outbound retailer links: when you follow one, your browser tells our site which deal the link belonged to, and we add one to that deal's total for the day. We also count the visits our own posts, ads and emails bring: if you arrived from a link in one of them, your browser tells our site so once, when the page opens — the short label on the link we posted, such as “tg” for Telegram, “fbad” for one of our ads on Facebook or Instagram, or “em” for a link in our weekly email, and the address of that page on our site — and we add one to that label’s total for the day. Your browser keeps the label for that visit only, in its session storage, and adds it to the click count above; it does none of this if it sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. When you follow a link to a store in the CJ network, the same label (or “web”) is added to that link, so CJ’s reports to us split sales the same way. Nothing else is sent or kept with it — no cookie, no identifier, no IP address — and the totals are for us, not shown on the site.

Votes on a deal. Under the Deal Meter on a deal's page you can say whether it is a good deal, and, if it is not, what is off — or report that the deal is gone (the page will not open, it will not ship to your address, the price went up, it sold out) with the Deal’s gone button. When you press one of those buttons we keep: the deal, your vote, the reason if you gave one, the price the page showed, the time, your country and your network (the internet provider or company the connection belongs to, as Cloudflare reports it), how long the page had been open, and a code made from your IP address and browser details with a secret key that changes every month. The code lets us tell one person’s repeated votes apart and throw out floods of automated or coordinated votes; the IP address and the browser details themselves are not stored, and the code cannot be turned back into them without our key. Votes are kept in Cloudflare’s Workers Analytics Engine, which deletes them after three months. They are never shown on the site, no count included, and we use them to check and improve the Deal Meter, and to find deals that have ended: when several people report the same deal gone, one of us checks it before anything on its page changes. Votes from our own team are marked and left out. Pressing a vote button, or the Subscribe button of our weekly email (Section 8), also runs Cloudflare Turnstile, a check that tells people from automated scripts without a puzzle to solve: its script is loaded from Cloudflare only at that moment, never for a visitor who does not vote or subscribe, and Cloudflare handles what it reads under its Turnstile privacy terms. If we add any other measurement tool, this section changes before it goes live.

8. Email

Our weekly email. If you type your email address into the sign-up box at the bottom of a page, we send that address one email with a link to confirm. Only when you press the button behind that link do we add the address to the list for our weekly email: one email a week, with price drops from our own record and links to our own pages. We keep the address, when it was confirmed and whether it has unsubscribed. The list is kept, and the emails are sent, by Resend, our email service, which handles the addresses only on our behalf. Pressing Subscribe runs Cloudflare Turnstile (Section 7) to keep automated sign-ups out. A confirmation link expires after 72 hours, and an address that is never confirmed is never added. Our emails carry no tracking pixel and their links are not rewritten to count clicks. Every email you get from the list has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect at once; after that we keep the address only on a do-not-email record, so it is not mailed again by mistake — ask us and we will delete it entirely.

Email you send us. If you write to help@realdealmeter.com we receive what you put in the message — your address, your name if you sign it, and whatever you write. That mailbox is hosted by Zoho Mail, which stores the messages on our behalf. We use them to reply to you and keep a record of the exchange. You are not added to our weekly email by writing to us. Ask and we will delete the correspondence.

9. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

California and Delaware law require us to say how we respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals. This site does not track visitors across other websites, so there is no cross-site tracking here for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off. Two things change when your browser sends either signal: it does not remember what you look at for “Picked for you” (Section 5) unless you turn that on yourself, and it neither sends nor keeps the label of the post, ad or email you arrived from (Section 7). That covers this site only — once you click through to a retailer, Section 4 applies.

10. Who else is involved

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. The weekly email's list is shared with no one but Resend, which sends it for us. The only third parties involved in running this site are Cloudflare (host, CDN, Web Analytics, and Turnstile when you vote on a deal or subscribe, Sections 3 and 7), AliExpress and Shopify (the photos of the stores' own products — Store Specials, the brand lineups and the stores' lists under the guides and category pages — loaded from their image servers, Section 6), Zoho Mail (email you send us, Section 8), Resend (our weekly email and its list, Section 8) and affiliate networks and retailers — the last of which are only involved after you click an outbound link. We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to an affiliate network or retailer we work with when it asks in order to investigate suspected fraud or to confirm that our links follow its programme rules. In practice we hold very little that could be disclosed.

11. Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. With no accounts or comments, the only personal information anyone can give us here is an email address for the weekly email. If you think a child has signed up or emailed us, write to help@realdealmeter.com and we will delete the address, and the message if there is one.

12. Your rights

Because we build no visitor profiles and keep no accounts, there is usually nothing to look up, correct or delete (“Picked for you” lives in your own browser, not with us — Section 5 says how to clear it). If you have emailed us and want that exchange deleted, ask. If you signed up for the weekly email, every email from it has an unsubscribe link, and we will delete your address entirely if you ask. Several US states give residents formal rights over their personal information, but those laws apply to businesses above certain revenue or data-volume thresholds, and a site this small falls well below them. Obliged or not, we will honour any reasonable request to see or delete anything we hold about you.

13. Where this site is aimed

Real Deal Meter is run from the United States, for visitors in the United States. Prices are in US dollars and the retailers serve the US market. We do not target this site at people in the European Union or the United Kingdom, and do not monitor the behaviour of visitors from those regions. If you visit from outside the United States, the information described in Section 3 is processed in the United States.

14. Security

There are no stored passwords and no payment data here, which removes most of what would normally be at risk. The weekly email's list is held by our email service, Resend, and email you send us by Zoho Mail. The site is served over HTTPS. No site can promise perfect security; the honest position is that we hold very little that could be lost.

15. Changes

If this policy changes — a new affiliate programme, or a new measurement tool — we will update the text and the effective date at the top of this page. When a change affects the weekly email, we say so in the next one; otherwise, check here if it matters to you.

16. Contact

Questions about this policy: help@realdealmeter.com