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When I buy something online, I always head to RetailMeNot and Google “<website> promo code” and try every coupon to see which one leaves me with the best discount (or hopefully, stacks with other ones for discounts).

This takes a while, but often pays off.  A few minutes of time for $10 in savings is a great trade-off.

But there’s a browser extension that will automatically run through every promo-code it has and will apply the code with the greatest savings.

Honey Browser Extension

Honey is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.  It pops up an alert when there are coupon codes available.

For example, when I was on Macys.com, it alerted me that there were 10 promo codes available.  I clicked “try promo codes” and it tried applying each code to my order.

It left the best code on the order automatically.

You can easily tell if there are promo codes for a website.  If there are none, Honey is greyed out and the extension goes inactive (so it isn’t continually running).

But when you navigate to a website it supports, it lights up and lets you know how many promo codes are available.

Some websites have a special promo codes just for Honey users, but you must have an account with Honey to access them (and not just the extension).

Honey also lets you look at all the promo codes available (in addition to trying them out automatically for you).  I like this because while Honey has done a good job of calculating my savings, I also still like to try it out myself (because I am neurotic careful).

Where Honey Does Not Work

Honey is unable to support individual promo codes such as ones you get via email or ones that are attached to your account, like Macys.  So you will still have to remove the code they chose as the best, and apply your own to compare.

It also doesn’t work as well with coupon stacking.  It cannot judge the best combination of three offers–it will just keep applying new coupon codes until it sees which coupon gives you the biggest discount.  I also think it gets a little confused by the discount offered by two combined coupons and attributes that to one coupon code.

For example, I used a website that’s the king of coupon-stacking–Victoria’s Secret. There are always coupon codes there for multiple types of products, but Victoria’s Secret allows a max of 3 coupon codes per order.  I tried putting almost one of everything in my cart and applying Honey.

This was the result:

I could still add one more coupon code to save more money.   Honey kept adding promo codes until it ran out of room, and then continually removed the last coupon code to try out a new one.

But you can still use Honey.  Watch the coupon codes get applied.  I paid attention and realized the free shipping coupon code took a lot off the order, so I applied that as my third one in my fake order.  It was still helpful, but I still would want to play around with stacking on my own.

(quick Victoria’s Secret tip–if you are sending a few hundred dollars and there’s a free shipping coupon code, it might be worth it to split up the orders to apply as many coupon codes as possible).

Other uses of Honey

Honey has this newer feature that lets you share in the affiliate commission they get when you click through their links.  They don’t send cash, but you can gift cards to places like Amazon.com.

You have to be proactive for this one, but it’s very easy.

You just click the lit up Honey icon.

If there’s an opportunity, it’ll let you know.  You need to click a button to apply that offer, but after that, you don’t need to do anything else.

The bonus goes into a fund called “HoneyGold”.  This is the area of Honey where I have less experience, so I have not redeemed anything myself yet.

100 HoneyGold points can be redeemed for $1 in Amazon credit, but you must have 1,000 points before you can redeem.

Since this is newer, I have no experience with how long it can take to add up to something redeemable.

A note though–this isn’t stackable with other cash back and points earning opportunities through portals (but it is stackable with cash back and point bonuses earned completely through a credit card).  This counts as a portal, so compare the offer to EVReward.

The Bottom Line

This extension can help people who are obsessed with deals by making sure they are aware of all the offers.  But the real benefit is for people who don’t remember to check for promo codes, or don’t explore EVRewards (or a similar site) every time they shop.

This will provide them with real, instant savings, and give them cash back they might have missed otherwise.

If you use my code to sign up, I believe I get a few HoneyGold points for it.  Which is apparently redeemable for actual gold in addition to gift cards