I tested nine different thrifting apps to determine which were the best. There are lots of thrifting apps available on the market, so there was a set of exclusion criteria in order to make this list as useful as possible. All apps eligible for review had to be resale (not wholesale), have both app and web services, be available on the Apple and Google Play app stores, and must only offer resale services, nothing additional like rental services. These criteria were created in order to ensure the apps included are accessible for users and operate under comparable business models.
When looking at the eligible apps, user experience was key to creating evaluations and rankings. I took the pain points from my own secondhand shopping experience — in real life and online — and evaluated how these apps either alleviated or exacerbated these things. This boiled down to looking at four major areas:
- Fees: For sellers, buyers, listings and any other hidden ones that might be a nasty surprise at checkout.
- Ease of return: How easy is it to return something you bought online?
- Ease of use: How user-friendly is the app, the website? What features do the top apps have that make browsing a pleasant experience?
- Product availability and inclusivity: Do apps who say they have plus sizes actually have them? How many categories and listings do they have?
To get a real sense of the user experience for each app, I made accounts for all the apps included on this list and played around with the personalization options, read help pages and browsed for hours on end. After using them on my own, I also lurked on Reddit threads, read blogs and watched video reviews to get some outside idea of what the known perks and drawbacks are for many of these apps. Due to my own financial limitations, I didn’t purchase anything from these apps, so I wanted to make sure I was understanding the customer experience as well as I could.
There wasn’t a straightforward way to compare the general prices of items across these apps. Instead, I looked at the things that may cause sellers to raise their prices, like fees and shipping costs, and I took note of how frequently sales or discounts were offered — and how you can get your money back in the event of a return. While this doesn’t mean there won’t be an occasional outrageous price tag on any of these apps, this seemed to be a good way to see the clearest comparisons across all the various market factors that determine an item’s price.
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