Who Can Save You More, Amazon or Costco?

By Chris Lange Updated Jan 12, 5:58AM EST · Published Nov 28, 1:35PM EST

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Who Can Save You More, Amazon or Costco? — © Thinkstock

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been cleaning up on most retailers over the past few years, dominating the space through its e-commerce platform. A couple of the main ideas of this platform are lower prices and accessibility to practically any product imaginable. But are the prices really that much lower?

LendEDU took a look at Amazon’s prices overall and compared them to another giant in the space, Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST). Here’s what the firm found out.

The total price increase when shopping on Amazon instead of at Costco for identical items was 12.1%. Also the average price increase for these identical items was 56.48%, when comparing Amazon to Costco.

The two widest differences for any subcategory came from identical food and beverage products. This subcategory tallied a total price increase of 95.82% and an average price increase of 120.15%.

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The narrowest differences for any subcategory came in technology, where the total price increase was 0.23% and the average price increase was 2.23%, for products on Amazon instead of Costco.

LendEdu described its process for this survey as:

Taking matters into our own hands, LendEDU went shopping at a physical Costco store in Long Island City, New York and browsed Amazon Prime to compare the prices on 38 identical, commonly-bought items…

After shopping at a physical Costco Wholesale location and browsing Amazon for 38 identical items, LendEDU found that, on average, products on Amazon are 56.48 percent more expensive than the same goods found at the Costco store.

If a consumer was to buy all 38 items that we analyzed in one fell swoop, he or she would find that the total price from buying on Amazon would be 12.10 percent more expensive than going to Costco and purchasing the same items.

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While Amazon seems to be winning the war against retail this season, don’t expect giants like Costco or Walmart to take this lying down.

Shares of Amazon were last seen at $1,199.20, with a consensus analyst price target of $1,227.32 and a 52-week trading range of $736.70 to $1,213.41.

Costco was trading at $173.60 a share, with a 52-week range of $150.00 to $183.18 and a consensus price target of $178.85.

More information and results of the survey are available at LendEDU.

About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.