The 9 Best eBay Sniper App Tools: Our Recommendations and Top Choice

Scouring your favorite auction site and bidding on interesting items can get addictive. But we want to make it easier for you. That's why we created this list of the best eBay sniper tools on the market.

This post focuses on online auction sniping and specifically helps you find the best eBay sniper service that suits your needs.

A sniper works as an eBay bidding software that helps you win auctions by placing the highest bid for an eBay item in the final moments of the auction.

So let's look at some of the best eBay auction sniper tools available. We'll then go a bit deeper into the overall bid sniper topic and end on our number 1 pick. Please enjoy!

No time to waste?

In that case we'll get right to the point and recommend BidSlammer. It's offers a free eBay sniper tool, PLUS an alert service to help you find rare items, an email manager, tracking and monitoring, and the customization options in the industry!

Best eBay Sniper Tools: 9 Sniping Services To Try

There are many sniping services out there, the majority of them are inexpensive. When choosing a sniping service, the top things you want to look for are reputation, reliability, features, and cost.

Most services are pretty close when it comes to features. The reputation part is obvious, you’ll be giving them your eBay password after all.

Finally, they need to be reliable because they’ll be in bidding wars on your behalf on tons of auctions in the last few seconds. If their reliability can’t be trusted, might as well snipe manually.

Price can be a big deal too. But the good news is that there are some great services that don't cost you anything at all.

Best Free Ebay Sniper Tools

• BidSlammer
• Gixen
• JBidWatcher
• MyIBidder

The snipers listed above are powerful, reliable, and trustworthy (and I don't get anything for recommending them).

These services work as a sort of freemium model. Their free plan is more than enough for the majority of users. If you're getting super serious, then you can take a look at the paid plans. But I doubt that you'll have to do that.

If I had to recommend just one or two, I think that BidSlammer and Gixen users are the best two. Worst case scenario, you try them out for free, and you don't love them. You can try another bid sniper tool.

Best Paid Ebay Sniper Tools

• Bidnapper
• eSnipe
• EZSniper
• AuctionSniper
• Goofbid (UK primarily)

Some popular Auction & Bid Sniper Strategies

Buy It Now

“But It Now”, also known as “BIN” is not a bidding wars strategy per se, as using “buy it now” circumvents the whole bidding process. Sellers may allow items to have a BIN price as an alternative to the auction. Once the first bid is placed on the auction, the BIN price disappears and it’s no longer possible to buy using BIN.

It’s worth noting, however, that it’s generally hard to find bargain-priced BIN items for auctions that allow it, mainly because BIN doesn’t really last long, so it may be a good idea to set up a saved eBay search that notifies you when new items matching your criteria appear so that you can jump in and hopefully claim them at BIN price before the auction starts.

Bid Nibbling

This is by far my least recommended strategy (though others may disagree) because it’s the most time consuming, nerve wrecking and it drives auction bidding prices up quickly. Bid nibbling is basically watching the auction and increasing your eBay bid occasionally, slightly above the current max bid to remain the highest bidder.

On the other hand, people against the strategy argue that nibbling is a double-edged sword that may as well attract a lot of bidders due to the increased activity on the item. The “social proof” gets people interested and excited in an item they may have otherwise ignored.

When they see other people actively bidding and seemingly “fighting” over the item, they decided they want to get a piece of the action.

Proxy Bidding

This would be my second recommended bidding strategy after sniping. In fact, my most recommended strategy is kind of a hybrid between proxy bidding wars and bid sniping. We’ll get into sniping in the next section but in this one, let’s focus on proxy bidding.

Let’s illustrate proxy bidding with an example.

Say we have two people bidding on an item, John and Jane. They could be watching the auction at the very same time and upping their bids accordingly. So John bids $10, Jane bids $10.5, John bids $11…etc. All being done manually. Now that is called nibbling, we talked about it in the previous section above. What about proxy bidding then?

Rather than watching the auction and responding manually to competing bids, eBay actually allows you to set a maximum auction price from the very beginning. So, for instance, say there's a new smartphone retailing at $999, with the current highest bid being $10 by John.

Rather than bidding $10.5, Jane will set her maximum bid at $800. She knows that she can get that phone locally at $999, so she decides that the maximum she’s willing to spend to acquire it through eBay (and still save quite a bit on it) is $800. So what happens now? Does the current bid increase to $800? Does Jane have to pay $800 now? No, not at all.

But then what?

So eBay’s “proxy” will do automatic bidding for Jane. It’ll bid the next least amount that’ll allow Jane to outbid the winning bid without surpassing her “maximum bid”. Say John ups the bid to $11, then Jane’s proxy will start automatic bidding up it to $11.5. It’ll continue doing that all on its own until one of two things happen:

Either John (and other potential bidders) finally give up and Jane wins the auction (in which case she'd pay the current maximum bid, not HER maximum bid since it wasn't reached), or the bidding wars continue till someone (John or another bidder) eventually bids more than $800.

When this happens, Jane’s proxy will stop automatic bidding and whoever bids above $800 will win the auction (providing they aren’t outbid by another bidder).

So essentially, Jane’s proxy did all the dirty work for her while keeping her out of the picture. She could be sleeping or at work while the system continues bidding for her using predefined rules (her maximum bid).

This is a professional bidding method and prevents her from getting emotional and bidding more than she's willing to pay for the item during a heated bidding war.

So Proxy Bidding clearly has some attractive advantages.

So, what are the disadvantages of Proxy Bidding?

This is because people will keep getting instantly outbid (by your proxy) and that may encourage and fuel bidding wars as the item gets more attention, quickly driving the bid up.

This disadvantage is similar to the Bid Nibbling one. Increased activity on the listing you’re interested in does not typically work in your favor if the goal is to win the item at the lowest possible price.

eBay Bid Sniping

This is the strategy of choice (with a little twist) and I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first, let’s get into the mechanics of how it works. It’s actually pretty ingenious and university studies in the United States including Yale have analyzed it in-depth.

Sniping works by placing a single bid for an item just before an auction ends, usually just minutes or seconds before, in an attempt to quickly claim or “snipe” the auction.

The theory here is that by placing a quick late bid seconds before the auction ends, you make it nearly impossible for other bidders to react to your bid, hence the winning bid in the auction. Before you “strike” the place bid button in the final few seconds, you’re just lurking in the shadows, placing no bids at all.

This helps you remain “undetected” by other bidders, meaning no more bidding wars which also does not add activity to the listing, so as not to potentially attract more bidders.

But please keep in mind the limits of eBay sniping

Notice that I started the last paragraph with “the theory here”? This is because, in theory, you should win almost every auction you “snipe”. Practically, though, that isn’t the case. But wait, how would anyone else outbid you 3 seconds before the auction ends?

You discover that you were outbid, and someone won the auction at $12.5. How? Why? Well, they had originally set a higher maximum bid than your own bid and were using proxy bidding, so when you placed your bid, the system instantly reacted and drove the bid up to outbid you, allowing them to claim the auction.

Beware of Proxy Bidders

So even though you placed (what you thought) was the highest bid seconds before the auction ended, the system reacted and allowed someone else to win because they had a higher maximum bid. Recall when we said eBay wants the highest bidder to win, regardless of the time they placed their bid? This is how it’s done to keep things fair.

So then what? If there’s a chance someone can easily outbid you and win when sniping, then why snipe at all?

Why Seek Out the Best eBay Sniper?

As I mentioned earlier, even the best eBay auction sniper tool won't guarantee you win an auction, but there are certainly several advantages involved.

There are general advantages to sniping that apply whether you’re doing it manually or using a sniping service or software. Additionally, there are advantages to automated sniping services:

Avoid unnecessary listing activity

Not bidding early helps you avoid attracting non-serious bidders as well as no more bidding wars and nibblers.

Less time consuming

You don’t have to monitor the listing all day long and place bids accordingly, you can simply set an alarm or a timer and jump in right before the auction ends to place your bid.

Minimal chance for other bidders to react

Many people don’t place a maximum bid and choose to bid manually.

You’d expect most people to do this by default, however, a lot of people don’t.

Instead, they place a bid, and then wait and see how the auction unfolds before deciding to place a second bid manually. Sniping, in that case, will not give them the chance to react after you place your bid right before the auction ends.

Prevents shill bidding

Shill bidding is when a seller asks family members, friends, or uses another eBay account to bid on their own listing in an attempt to inflate the current bidding price.

Sometimes they’d use this method to try and figure out your maximum bid (if you’re using proxy bidding/automated bidding). Then they'll retract that bid and place one directly below your maximum bid, forcing you to win the auction at your maximum bid.

While this rarely happens, it can, and sniping will not give an eBay seller the chance to use this shady practice.

Human Error Prevention

Things like trying to bid at the last moment while being logged out (and hence missing the auction).

Or bidding an incorrect amount because you’re rushing yourself. Or forgetting to bid entirely, or experiencing internet connectivity issues that lead to you losing the auction.

All of these issues can be almost 100% prevented by using automated sniping software packages.

Accurate up to the last second

Sniping manually means you probably don’t want to risk placing your bid in the last 5 seconds of the auction, because you can easily miss it.

Automatic bid sniping services allow for more successful late bidding as you can accurately place bids 5 seconds or even less before the auction ends.

Bid Sniping Groups

This is a very interesting functionality that comes with most bid sniping services. Say you want to buy a new iPhone 8 and there are currently 50 running auctions for the iPhone 8.

If you bid on them all, you risk winning multiple iPhone 8s, which is not what you want.

Instead, by grouping all the iPhone 8 listings together, you’re essentially telling the software that while you join multiple auctions, you only need to win one of those listings, not all.

In that case, once you win a listing, the software cancels any plans to bid on further listings within this group. This group bidding significantly increases your chances of claiming an iPhone 8 at a great price.

Is Bid Sniping Allowed on eBay?

The short answer is yes, both sniping manually and sniping using automated software is allowed according to eBay rules. eBay’s own help center mentions this clearly.

That said, eBay sellers typically hate sniping, but that’s to be expected. A seller’s goal on eBay is to sell their item at the highest possible price (check out this list of the best things to sell on eBay for great options), while the buyer’s goal is to get it at the lowest possible one . These are two mutually exclusive events, and hence it makes sense for a seller to hate sniping as it may hinder the seller from achieving their goal.

This does not mean that sniping is illegal or unethical though, as like we said earlier, people could still easily outbid you by using eBay’s automated bidding and setting a higher maximum bid.

Sniping does not force others into a disadvantageous position and does not earn the “sniper” an unfairly advantageous one.

Because you could easily beat a sniper, and beating them does not depend on the speed at which you react to late biddings (which is what sniping does, helps you bid late). Beating them is as simple as bidding higher than them, at any point during the auction.

How to Snipe Manually

There are basically two ways to snipe, either manually or using sniping software or services.

It might seem like the obvious choice will always be the automated services, however, these services need your eBay username and password to operate correctly. If you’re not comfortable sharing these details with a third-party, then automated sniping might not be for you.

Your Step by Step Guide to Manual Sniping

1. Ensure you’re logged in to eBay before sniping, otherwise, you risk the auction ending before you can place your bid if you get held up logging in within the last few seconds before the auction ends.
2. Locate the item you want to snipe. Make sure you add it to your watchlist or note down the auction’s ending time and set an alarm 5-10 minutes before the auction ends.
3. Decide how much you’d be willing to spend on the item. Forget the current bid, simply decide how much the item is worth for you. If anyone else wins the auction by a higher bid, you don't have regrets as you didn't want to pay any more than the amount you had set your maximum bid to anyway.
4. Make sure you do not place any early bids.
5. Within the last minute of the auction, place your snipe bid. And that’s it, you’re done!

The Verdict on Best eBay Sniper: My Recommendation

I honestly don’t see the point of recommending a paid service right off the bat. There are a few free tried and true ones that do a great job and tick the boxes I’ve listed above.

Additionally, these services also offer “premium” subscriptions for the super savvy snipers, but I feel that most casual snipers won’t need those features.

So my two recommendations are BidSlammer and Gixen. Their services are free, trusted, reliable, and come with all the essential features.

Of course, feel free to do your own research and choose the service you’re most comfortable with. And we also want to give an honorable mention to EZ Sniper.

The free snipers are often fine for most people. Paid alternatives differ in pricing strategy, as some charge a monthly or yearly fee. While others charge a flat percentage of the value of the item you've won.

But again, even if you intend on going the paid sniping tool route. I highly recommend you try out a free auction bid sniper first.

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