You're at the checkout, there's a box that says “discount code”, and you feel daft paying full price when someone somewhere probably has 10% off. So you search — and find a dozen sites promising codes that mostly don't work, some that want your email, and a few that are outright scams. Here's how to find the genuine ones, and how the “savings” industry actually makes its money.
Where genuine codes actually come from
- The shop itself. Signing up to a retailer's newsletter very often gets you a first-order code (10% is common). Use a separate email address or folder if you don't want the marketing afterwards — and unsubscribe once you've used it.
- Abandoned baskets. Some shops email a code if you sign in, add something to your basket and leave. It's not guaranteed, but it's common.
- Your job or status. Students (TOTUM, UNiDAYS), NHS and emergency services staff (Blue Light Card, Health Service Discounts) can get discounts through official schemes. Check the scheme's own website, not a lookalike.
- Your bank or card. Many banks and credit cards run cashback offers with named retailers inside their app.
- Asking. A polite message to a small shop's customer service asking if there's a code for a first order works more often than you'd think.
How coupon and cashback sites make money
Voucher-code sites and cashback sites are mostly paid by the shops, through affiliate commission: when you click through their link and buy, the shop pays them a percentage. Cashback sites pass part of that on to you. That's a legitimate business — we use affiliate links ourselves and say so — but it explains why these sites list every shop they can, why many listed “codes” are expired or made up to get your click, and why the top of the page isn't necessarily the best deal. Treat them as a place to look, not a promise.
The browser-extension problem
“Automatic coupon finder” browser extensions sound like free money. The catch is that some of them earn by putting their own affiliate tag on your purchase at checkout. In December 2024 an investigation by the YouTuber MegaLag alleged that PayPal's Honey extension replaced other people's affiliate links with its own at checkout — even when it hadn't found you a discount — and that it let partner shops limit which codes it showed. PayPal faced a wave of lawsuits from content creators, and in 2025 Google tightened the Chrome Web Store rules: extensions may now only add or replace affiliate codes with the user's explicit knowledge and when they provide “a direct and transparent user benefit”.
The wider point: any extension that can read and change what you do on shopping sites can see an awful lot about you. If you use one, keep it to a well-known name, check its permissions, and remove any you don't recognise.
Red flags: when a “discount” is a scam
- A “code generator” or any page that asks for your card details, bank details or a “small verification fee” to unlock a code. Codes are free. Close it.
- Social media posts offering vouchers worth £100+ from a supermarket or airline for sharing a post or filling in a survey. These are harvesting your details.
- A website with prices far below everyone else, plus a timer ticking down. That's the classic fake-shop pattern — our guide to spotting a scam website walks through the checks.
- Codes that only work if you pay by bank transfer. You lose the protection that paying by card gives you.
Is the “was” price real?
A code off an inflated price isn't a saving. Before you buy, check what the same product costs elsewhere (a quick search of the exact model name does it), and be wary of “was £199, now £59” claims on sites you've never heard of. Reviews help here too — but only if they're genuine: see how to spot fake reviews.
A quick routine that works
- Add the item to your basket on the shop's own site.
- Check the shop's own website for offers, and whether signing up to its emails gets a first-order code.
- Check any scheme you belong to (student, NHS, Blue Light, your bank's cashback).
- Try one or two well-known voucher sites. If the first few codes fail, stop — the rest usually will too.
- Pay by card, on the shop's real site, never through a link in a message.
Our own honesty bit
We don't run fake countdown timers, fake “was” prices or codes that expire in ten minutes. Our phones are priced at what they cost us plus one flat fee, and we show the sums. Where we recommend something on Amazon, the link is labelled — we earn a few pence and it never changes what we recommend.