Affiliate disclosure
TopHity is a product selection site. We do not sell products, take payments or hold stock.
How we earn money
The “Buy” buttons lead to the platforms through our affiliate links. If you buy something, the platform or the affiliate network pays us a commission. You pay the same price.
Under EU rules, commercial communications must be clearly identifiable as such and must identify the person on whose behalf they are made (Article 6 of Directive 2000/31/EC; in Malta, article 8D of the Electronic Commerce Act, Cap. 426), and a commercial practice must make its commercial intent clear where it is not already apparent from the context (Article 7(2) of Directive 2005/29/EC; in Malta, article 51D(1)(b) of the Consumer Affairs Act, Cap. 378). That is why each “Buy” button carries an “Ad” label: it means the link is an affiliate link and we may receive a commission on the purchase. The platform the link leads to is named on the product card and on the button on the product page.
We take part, or plan to take part, in these affiliate programmes: AliExpress Affiliate, Admitad, Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, Awin.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
How products are selected
All data comes from the platforms’ official sources: affiliate APIs and product feeds. We do not scrape shop websites.
The “top N” badge is the product’s sales rank on the platform at the time of the update, according to the platform itself (not our own sales). The number is the position among the selected products: we skip products with low customer ratings, trinkets and duplicates. We do not show the platform’s crossed-out “old price” for bestsellers, because we cannot verify it.
The “−N%” badge is for shops that do not publish a sales ranking. We show products in stock with the best discount: we take into account both the percentage and the actual amount saved, so a −85% sale on trinkets does not push out a good item at −40%. Variants of one product (colour, size, phone model) are shown as one card, and we show at most two products from any one brand (three if the shop carries few brands). We do not show trinkets cheaper than a quarter of the shop’s average price in the category. The crossed-out price is labelled:
- “lowest in 30 days” — we record prices ourselves every day, and the discount is calculated from the lowest price in the 30 days before the price reduction (EU rules; in Malta, regulation 5A of the Consumer Affairs Act (Price Indication) Regulations, S.L. 378.09). If the product is not cheaper than that price now, or its price has not changed for more than 30 days, we do not show it;
- until we have 30 days of our own price history before the reduction, we do not show the product — the shop’s crossed-out price (“according to the shop”) is not used on this site.
- if a shop gives no previous price at all, we only show price cuts we have observed ourselves in our price history — under the same rule.
“No. N in the selection” is a hand-picked list. It is not a sales ranking.
“New on the shelf” means the product was added to this shelf in the last 7 days (according to our update records). It does not mean the product is new at the shop. We only show this label on shelves we have been tracking for at least 7 days.
Season. In seasonal categories (clothing, shoes, kids, sports), current-season items come first: September to February is autumn–winter, March to August is spring–summer. Out-of-season items (summer items in winter, winter items in summer) go on the shelf only if there are fewer than 20 in-season items, and they are placed at the end. The season switches automatically.
Full shelf. A platform’s products appear in a category only as a full set of 20. We do not show incomplete shelves; a category without a full shelf is listed under “Coming soon” on the home page. If a platform has not sent data, we leave the shelf empty.
Shelf order. If a category has a shelf from a shop whose delivery to your country we have checked on the shop’s own website, that shelf comes first. AliExpress shelves follow it, and the rest stay in a fixed order. Shops do not pay to have their shelf placed higher.
Prices, availability and price history
Data is updated every 6 hours. Each price shows when it was updated. Delivery is not included in the price. The current price and availability are those on the platform’s page at the time of purchase. We show prices in euros as AliExpress gives them for delivery to Malta. The basket shows the exact final price and whether it includes VAT and any other charges. If a consignment is worth more than €150, VAT and customs duty may be collected on import, and the carrier may also charge a customs clearance fee.
On the product page we show a price chart: the lowest price of each day according to the shop’s data, which we record ourselves.
Product names are shown in the language the platform provides them in.
Price with delivery. The line “≈ … incl. delivery” under the price is an estimate, not the shop’s price: the product price plus delivery under the shop’s terms, which we recorded when checking its delivery (usual cost and free-delivery threshold). We do not use terms older than 90 days. If no terms are recorded, the line is not shown. The exact amount is shown in the shop’s basket. Amounts are rounded up.
Purchase and returns
Your purchase contract is with the platform or with the seller on it. Delivery, warranty and returns are subject to their terms.
Click data
When you press a “Buy” button, we record the product number, the time, your browser (user-agent) and a hash of your IP address with a salt that changes every day. The click record does not contain the IP address itself. This is needed to count clicks. A click counts only if the button was pressed on a page of our site; visits by bots are not counted and are not passed on to the shop.