How to tell a real sneaker discount from a fake one

Why every listing is on sale

Maximum Retail Price is printed by the seller, not set by a market. On a sneaker it is a marketing number: pick a high one, discount from it, and the listing can advertise “60% off” forever without the price ever having been that high. Nothing about that is illegal and almost everyone does it, which is exactly why the percentage carries no information.

The test is simple. If a discount is calculated against a number the seller chose, it tells you about the seller. If it is calculated against prices someone recorded over time, it tells you about the shoe.

Three checks before you buy

• Compare the price to itself, not to MRP. The only question worth asking is what this shoe has actually cost recently. A pair that has sat at the same number for two months is not on sale today, whatever the banner says.
• Check the price everyone can get. Headline prices often quietly assume a coupon, a specific card, or a first-order discount. Work out what you would pay at checkout with nothing applied, then add the offers you personally qualify for.
• Compare the same colourway. Model names are reused across silhouettes and materials. A Speedcat in leather and a Speedcat in suede are different shoes at different prices, and a comparison that mixes them is not a comparison.

What counts as a drop

We only call a price change a drop when it clears both 5% and ₹200. Two thresholds rather than one, because 5% off a budget sneaker is small change and ₹200 off a premium pair is a rounding error. Either test on its own would have us emailing people about noise.

Retailers also move prices by a few rupees constantly: currency, feed syncs, rounding. A tracker that flagged every one of those would be useless within a week.

A worked example

Here is one shoe from our catalogue. The page behind this card shows every price we have recorded and every store we found it at, which is the whole argument: the number only means something next to its own history.

Puma

SPEEDCAT OG

₹6,499 · 1 store

Compare →

When the honest answer is “wait”

Sometimes there is no good price on offer and the useful advice is to do nothing. If a shoe was cheaper eleven times this year, buying at today’s number is a choice to pay more for having it sooner, which is a perfectly reasonable choice, as long as you are making it knowingly. Sizes do sell through, and a price that never comes back down is still possible.

You can browse everything we track, or read how we decide what a good price is.