# How to tell whether a duty-free price is really a saving

The shelf at the airport makes a promise before you have read a single label: no tax, so it must be cheaper. Often it is. Sometimes the supermarket near your home beats it, and sometimes the airport you land at beats the one you leave from. The difference between a good buy and an expensive souvenir is usually a minute of arithmetic, and these are the checks worth making.

## Start with the price at home

Duty free removes some of the taxes built into a bottle's price, but not every country taxes the same things by the same amounts. Where spirits carry heavy duty, the airport usually wins, sometimes by a wide margin. Where they do not, a large supermarket or an online shop at home can match the airport or undercut it, especially on the bottles that are always on promotion.

Before you fly, look the bottle up where you would normally buy it. That number, not the shelf's own promise, is what the airport has to beat.

## Compare by the litre

Airport shelves favour the litre bottle; shops at home favour 70 or 75 centilitres. A one-litre bottle at 40 looks dearer than a 70-centilitre bottle at 30 until you divide: the litre costs 40 a litre, the smaller bottle about 43. Gift packs and twin packs hide the arithmetic further.

> The cheapest shelf price is not always the best buy. A litre at the second-cheapest airport can beat seventy centilitres at the first.

## Check the date on the price

Airport prices move. Promotions come and go, exchange rates shift, and a new season's range replaces the old one. Every price on Duty Free Professor carries the date we saw it, because a price from last month is a guide, not a promise. If a saving depends on a price that is weeks old, expect it to have moved, in either direction.

## Know what changes the price at the till

The shelf price is the public price. What you actually pay can differ:

- **Loyalty tiers.** Several retailers price differently for members, and the member price is the one on the receipt.
- **Where you are flying.** Some shops apply different prices, or different taxes, depending on your destination and whether you are leaving a customs area.
- **How you pay.** Paying by card in a currency other than your own invites a conversion rate you did not choose. Pay in the local currency and let your card do the exchange.
- **Bundles and promotions.** "Two for" offers are only a saving if you wanted two.

## Look along your whole route

The same bottle rarely costs the same at every airport, even from the same retailer. If you pass through two or three airports on a trip, the cheapest one is worth knowing before you are standing in the first. Tell us which airports you will be at and every price on the site is compared across those shops: [set your airports](/savings).

## When the airport wins outright

Some bottles you can only buy airside. Travel exclusives, the litre editions and airport-only expressions, are the reason many travellers walk into the shop at all, and there is no price at home to beat. [Browse the travel exclusives](/exclusives).

Award winners are the other easy call. A medal from a serious competition is an independent opinion on what is in the bottle, and we show the medals from the Professor's own competitions beside the price: [see the award winners](/awards).

## Mind the allowance

The best saving is wasted if it is taxed on arrival. Every destination sets its own personal allowance for spirits, wine and fragrance, and the limits change. Check the official allowance for where you are landing before you buy for the whole family.

## The one-minute checklist

1. Know the price at home.
2. Compare by the litre.
3. Check the date on the price.
4. Ask what changes it at the till.
5. Compare the airports on your route.
6. Stay inside your allowance.

Every price on Duty Free Professor is a public shelf price, checked and dated, compared shop by shop. It will not tell you what your loyalty card is worth, but it will tell you where the same bottle costs least, and when we last saw it there.