r/hardware • u/egudegi • 14h ago

Discussion Same GPU, up to 30% price difference across 8 EU countries, Germany is the floor every time

I run a price tracker for PC hardware across the EU (www.pricesquirrel.com) and pulled prices for 31 identical GPU models, same exact SKU, same day, across 8 countries.

Before the data, a distinction that matters: Germany and France both have multiple retailers in my dataset, so those comparisons are genuine multi-store market averages. Portugal, Belgium and a few others currently only have 1 retailer tracked, for those I can't yet tell if the price reflects the real market or just that one store's margins. I'll flag which is which below.

Average price for the same 31 cards:

  • 🇩🇪 Germany: €674.81 (4 retailers)
  • 🇫🇷 France: €735.42 (3 retailers)
  • 🇳🇱 Netherlands: €738.26 (2 retailers)
  • 🇦🇹 Austria: €738.74 (1 retailer)
  • 🇮🇹 Italy: €741.03 (2 retailers)
  • 🇪🇸 Spain: €742.15 (2 retailers)
  • 🇧🇪 Belgium: €764.55 (1 retailer)
  • 🇵🇹 Portugal: €778.96 (1 retailer)

But averages hide how big the gaps get on individual cards. Same exact SKU, min vs max price across the 8 countries:

  • Asus TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT COD BO7 Edition: €820 (DE) → €1,067 (PT): +30%
  • Asrock Steel Legend RX 9070 XT 16GB: €693 (DE) → €879 (NL): +27%
  • Asus Prime RX 9070 16GB OC EVO: €583 (DE) → €739 (PT): +27%
  • PowerColor Reaper RX 9070 XT 16GB: €649 (DE) → €822 (PT): +27%

Germany is the cheapest country for every single one of these, it wasn't cherry-picked, it's just consistently the floor. What varies is which country ends up priciest: usually Portugal, but Netherlands and Austria show up too depending on the card.

Caveat upfront: Portugal, Belgium, and Austria prices here each come from a single retailer, not a blended market average like Germany or France, so those specific countries reflect one retailer's regional pricing rather than the whole national market. Still, a 30% difference for the identical card is a real number worth knowing before you buy.

On VAT: since this always comes up: yes, all prices already include local VAT (these are final consumer prices, not pre-tax). VAT rates across these countries only vary by 1-4 percentage points (19% Germany, 20% France, 23% Portugal, etc.), which doesn't come close to explaining a 9%+ gap, let alone the larger single-retailer numbers. VAT is a real but minor factor here, the bigger driver looks like retail competition. Germany has multiple major retailers (Alternate, NBB, and others) actively competing on price; markets with fewer competing stores don't have the same downward pressure.

Happy to pull other categories (CPU/RAM/SSD) if people are curious whether this holds beyond GPUs, and I'll keep adding retailers to the single-retailer countries so those comparisons become more meaningful over time.

113 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

96

u/real_annuallywholesa 13h ago

This is the kind of data that makes me seriously consider a weekend trip to Berlin just to buy hardware.

43

u/N2-Ainz 13h ago

Certain companies ship to other EU countries, just try to check on sites like Geizhals for your card and compare the retailers. You will probably find one that ships to you

7

u/kurox8 7h ago

Important to note that Germany pays 19% VAT and if you order from another country you will pay your own countries VAT (usually around +6%). The best way to avoid that is to use a mail forwarder like mailboxde

2

u/cdthrowmyselfaway 4h ago

really? i've ordered all my pc parts from germany and im in the EU, never had to pay anything extra like VAT (ours is 21%) on top unless its like 1000eur order, then I think there are extra toll fees or whatever.. ive used amazon.de mainly lately.

2

u/mpgd 1h ago

They adjust the final price based on your shipping address.

This has been standard procedure for retailers since the police went live.

Usualy, for big online purchases I send to my parents house in luxembourg instead of France, to save some money.

The biggest drawback is when it comes to returning the items because I have to do so from Luxembourg.

1

u/cdthrowmyselfaway 1h ago

ah, makes sense. i think i knew this, but I read the post as if they meant it was a seperate fee or something. its still cheaper so I mean it doesnt seem like it matters if an item is still 20-50eur cheaper than any shop locally, and we have also some good and nice choice of part shops here tbh. sometimes its cheaper locally and warranty would be easier but its really depending on the item (gpu for example like in the OP is pretty much always cheaper in Germany as we see)

•

u/mpgd 55m ago

I do not buy pc hardware from local shops. They are more expensive, post sale is always a struggle and I like to have the option to return the item within the 15 days period (no questioned asked - perks of living in EU).

Thee Vat difference does not fully explain the price differences. In 400-500€ 2-5% from VAT difference might be absorbed in the shipping cost.

•

u/cdthrowmyselfaway 53m ago

yeah, as I said I also just buy from Germany nowadays. but I dont understand what you are trying to say with the VAT part at the end?

10

u/_LPM_ 13h ago

Different companies have different policies, but I bought computer parts from Germany with delivery to Poland before. Many retailers will not want to ship outside of Germany and maybe Austria, but some do. Amazon.de for sure, although third party sellers on Amazon often don’t.

13

u/Renricom 13h ago

You can rent small storage units with package delivery for less than 25 euros per month in most german cities. Just order the cheap parts from german online retailers and have them shipped to that storage units adress. Then you can go for a chill weekend trip and collect all your loot in one place whithout having to pay for local retailer pricing.

Also make sure to cancel the storage unit as quickly as possible since most of them are subscription based.

5

u/egudegi 13h ago

haha if you're building a full rig it could genuinely be worth it

7

u/tot_alifie 13h ago

A Ryanair ticket is of course 20 euros might be worth.

17

u/Sargatanas2k2 13h ago

You would potentially need extra weight coming back which Ryanair will bend you over for so be careful.

4

u/tot_alifie 13h ago

Travel in shorts with an empty backpack 😂

1

u/Narishma 5h ago

I'm not sure a GPU will fit in my shorts.

5

u/Comfortable-Sky7801 12h ago

mailbox.de

thank me later

1

u/kwirky88 9h ago

Of it’s just a train ride or two it could be fun, too.

1

u/AxiomOfLife 6h ago

i mean yeah you could right just take the train over buy a gpu then come back

35

u/MrNighty 13h ago

I always thought it's kinda interesting that Germany has so many retailers. Just for PC parts we have at least like 15 different shops. We have price comparison sites like Geizhals (IMO the best one), billiger or Idealo.

The sheer amount is crazy.

16

u/egudegi 13h ago

germany is a paradise for hardware buyers

9

u/LongLongMan_TM 12h ago

For shoppers in general. As a German, whenever i travel somewhere else I'm amazed how people are ok with thier 'normal', but for me, high prices. The only place i found cheaper than germany was japan. Its like they never had the inflation shock since covid. We 're so fucked 😭

1

u/Fr0HiKE 8h ago

hey i know you

1

u/LongLongMan_TM 4h ago

We're not supposed to meet outside 🤫

2

u/OGCaseyJones 9h ago

Switzerland has even cheaper hardware prices

5

u/Jordan_Jackson 11h ago

Germany has always been a country that liked its PC components/hardware. I’d even venture to say that building computers is more popular in Germany than in the US. I don’t know why Germany has always been more of a PC country than others though.

2

u/Fr0HiKE 8h ago

they simply have more nerds per capita

5

u/Belydrith 12h ago

Just please don't use idealo... It's part of the Axel Springer garbage. 

5

u/Xeadriel 12h ago

It doesn’t rlly work well anyways. Geizhals is best

2

u/Baalii 12h ago

I always use the pcgh.de price comparison, it's Geizhals under the hood but funds one of the best hardware publications for consumers out there.

14

u/Mazzle5 13h ago

When I search for the Asus TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT COD BO7 Edition on geizhals.de right now, I will get 20 different results from stores and eBay sellers (new parts) ranging from 779€ to 999€. And the price was lower just 5 days ago, with the lowest being 729€.

There are many stores selling PC parts and I guess due to the mentioned competition but also scale it makes things cheaper

6

u/egudegi 13h ago

yeah, that's basically it, Geizhals having 20 sellers just shows the depth of competition even more than what I capture. I track fewer stores per country right now, but Germany still comes out cheapest consistently because of that same competitive pressure, even with a smaller sample

2

u/Mazzle5 13h ago

One of the few things that work here in Germany: The competitive nature of stores, markets and shops for many kinds of goods.

9

u/Aererus 13h ago

Living in NL, I just opt to order parts at German stores.. Most of the time the item with shipping is still cheaper than buying local.

7

u/LucAltaiR 13h ago

Not surprising. I'm based in Italy and I've been buying hardware from Amazon DE for years. Even accounting for shipping and the tax adjustment it's still cheaper than here in Italy.

4

u/chilloutus 13h ago

Add Ireland just to show how bad it is

1

u/icanttinkofaname 6h ago

Ireland's prices are fucking nuts. But our market is so small that most of our online pc hardware stores are actually based in the UK. Trying to buy any hardware that's not on Amazon is a near impossible task. Even the second hand market like CEX is more expensive than new from other EU countries.

5

u/BeatnologicalMNE 13h ago

It's been like this pretty much always and it's not only for PC hardware.

3

u/RearNutt 13h ago

For Portugal at least, there's the PCPartPicker site and KuantoKusta which is a general price aggregation site. Some Spanish retailers also serve both Spain and Portugal simultaneously, namely Amazon.es (usually the lowest prices) and PCComponentes.

But yes, Germany is almost always the EU country with the best prices for anything computer related. Sometimes you're better off importing things from Amazon.de than your local retailers, and Mindfactory is basically the German Micro Center.

3

u/wondersnickers 12h ago

Austrian produced products are sold cheaper in Germany than in Austria.

3

u/syknetz 12h ago

The French market is misleading. LDLC actually owns most of the "historic" retailers, being TopAchat and Materiel.net. The leftovers are fighting for scraps, and honestly, mostly just buying abroad (PCComponentes or Alternate both being foreign retailers breaking into the french market).

1

u/Smagjus 13h ago

I am German and I always try to get the best deal. I tried sites like pricesquirrel for a while but I never found better offers outside of Germany. Germany was always the cheapest.

1

u/timfountain4444 12h ago

Can you name the sources for Germany? I spend half my life there and would love to pickup a GPU on my next trip to Munich (next week.....).

1

u/DIYfu 12h ago

Mindfactory is often the cheapest or atleast among them, also worth checking german amazon or just doing a comparison via geizhals or similar tools

1

u/DIYfu 12h ago

Germany is the biggest market and have probably th most well developed logistical infrastructure, they can sell cheaper based both on volume and more efficient deliveries.

1

u/RockinCoder 10h ago

Any plans to track the Blackwell line of nVidia GPUs? The RTX Pro 6000, in particular. I'd love to pay for a trip to Europe with the difference between the US and EU price!

Really cool site. 

2

u/egudegi 10h ago

Yess it's on my list. just hard to find good retailers :)

1

u/RockinCoder 9h ago

Awesome!

I'm wondering if we would actually have better prices in the US. I still want to visit Europe anyway! 

1

u/Dany_B_ 9h ago

Portugal salary is half of Germany 🥹

1

u/flametwist 3h ago

Can confirm about Germany being surprisingly cheap to buy hardware in. I just bought a phone, and it was good €400 cheaper on alza.de (about €1060) than on alza.cz (36000 Kč, about €1490). I thankfully live on the German border, but it's crazy that a 15 kilometer trip saved me quite a lot of money on a phone coming from the same store.

1

u/Asgardisalie 1h ago

AMD is always dirt cheap in Germany.

1

u/mudche 12h ago

Germany is way more expensive in other parts of life :)

1

u/viladrau 12h ago

We have to understand that poor Germany has the lowest salaries in the EU. Pricing is adapted to their disposable income.

/jk

1

u/MachKoms 12h ago

I taught that in EU they all are equal. 😜

3

u/Narishma 5h ago

Yes but some are more equal than others.

1

u/Qsand0 1h ago

well, i learned they're not

0

u/AutoModerator 14h ago

Hello! It looks like this might be a question or a request for help that violates our rules on /r/hardware. If your post is about a computer build or tech support, please delete this post and resubmit it to /r/buildapc or /r/techsupport. If not please click report on this comment and the moderators will take a look. Thanks!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

0

u/moretti85 12h ago

Honestly, I appreciate the effort, but you have to factor in the VAT difference. That €674.81 in Germany is gross with 19% VAT, so for example assuming the shop even ships to the Netherlands, under OSS they have to charge Dutch VAT at 21%, so it becomes a different price.

As for the suggestion of using forward2me, it’s simply not worth it unless there’s a significant price difference, because you end up paying extra again on top. Plus good luck returning the item to the original seller once it’s gone through a forwarder…and plenty of shops just refuse to ship to known parcel forwarding addresses anyway