Save on shipping: buy everything from one store

Crossave tells you what it really costs: shipping, duty and VAT already in the total.

Most people shop online one product at a time: search for the first, pick the cheapest store, then search for the second and pick another. It is the most natural way to buy — and the most expensive. Every extra store means an extra shipping fee, a free-delivery threshold you never reach, a discount code that stays below its minimum spend. This guide explains what buying separately really costs, when it pays to concentrate your spending in a single store, and how to find — in seconds — the store that has ALL the products on your list.

Why buying separately costs more than it looks

Shipping is the most visible cost, but only the first one. Three orders from three different stores pay for transport three times, and if the stores ship from outside the European Union each parcel goes through its OWN customs clearance: couriers charge roughly 15-30 euros per parcel to file the paperwork — a line that never appears in the listed price and that, multiplied by three, changes the total.

The second cost is the one you DON'T unlock. Many stores offer free delivery above a spending threshold, and many official discount codes only work from a minimum order value upwards: three small orders in three places all stay below the line, while the same money in a single store clears it. That is the paradox of always buying «each item from the cheapest seller»: optimising every single product loses the optimum of the whole basket.

The three levers of buying together

Concentrating your order in one store pays off when it pulls at least one of these three levers — and it often pulls two at once:

Customs: merging parcels can pay off — but not always

Honesty is needed here, because the rule cuts both ways. Import duty and VAT are calculated on the SHIPMENT, not on the single item: customs thresholds look at the value of the whole parcel. In the European Union percentage duty kicks in above 150 euros of GOODS value in the parcel: shipping is not added in for the threshold comparison (though it does count towards the base duty and VAT are charged on). Two parcels worth 90 euros of goods each stay under the threshold, while the same purchase merged into one 180-euro parcel crosses it and pays the duty rate of its product category.

On the other hand, since 1 July 2026 non-EU shipments up to 150 euros pay a flat duty of 3 euros each: three small parcels mean 9 euros of flat duty and three clearance fees, one parcel means one of each. Below the threshold, merging almost always pays; around the threshold you need to do the maths — which is exactly the calculation Crossave does for you on every result, writing «n/a» when a figure is missing instead of making it up.

If the stores ship from within the EU to an EU address, none of this applies to you: no customs at all, and the only maths left is the shipping-thresholds-and-codes maths of the previous section.

Type the product you're looking for and we'll compare it across stores and countries.

Finding the store that has them all: the Crossave cart

The practical problem is that to find out which store carries everything on your list you would have to open three websites and search three times. The Crossave cart does it with the searches you have already made: every result row has a button that sets the product aside, and the cart page compares the stores — for each one it says how many of YOUR products it has, at what total price, with which shipping cost and which discount codes your spending actually unlocks.

The comparison is honest by construction. If a store is missing a product, it says so — and it says «not seen in your searches», because that is all we know: the store may well stock it anyway. For stores just one product short of a full basket, Crossave goes and looks for the missing item on the store's own website: if the product page declares a price, it joins the comparison marked «price read from the store's site»; if the page is there but the price can't be read, you get the link and check the number yourself. The combined total is declared exact only when duty is zero for every item — in every other case the cart tells you what needs checking, instead of adding up numbers that don't belong together.

How to use it, in practice

Five steps, no sign-up — the cart lives in your browser and nobody else sees it:

Now you know what to look for — look at the price too: the same product costs differently country by country, and duty and VAT change the total.

Try the Crossave comparator →