> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://pricepirate.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How PricePirate works

> The key terms and the loop from synchronization to price change.

PricePirate compares your prices with those of your competitors, and it works in a simple loop: it regularly measures competitor prices on your marketplaces, derives a suggested price change from them, and applies it — either after your review or automatically. The following terms and steps appear again and again.

## Listing

A **listing** is the marketplace page where the offers of multiple merchants for one product are compared. You connect your product variant to exactly one listing per market — see [Connect listings](/docs/en/guide/catalog/connect-listings) for how to do this and which statuses exist.

## Offer

An **offer** is a single merchant price on a listing. A listing usually contains several offers from different merchants. Each offer has a product price, shipping costs, and a [total price](/docs/en/guide/concepts/total-price).

## Own offer

Your **own offer** is your shop's offer on a listing. PricePirate recognizes it through the **Own shop name** that you store in [Settings](/docs/en/guide/account/settings) — this is how the app tells your offer apart from competitors'. If the shop name is not stored correctly, your own offer is missing from the analyses.

## Synchronization

A [synchronization](/docs/en/guide/automation/syncs) is the regular query PricePirate runs on a connected listing, capturing all visible offers with their prices. All further data comes from these offers. You set how often it runs per listing — shop-wide in [Settings](/docs/en/guide/account/settings) or per listing in the [product settings](/docs/en/guide/catalog/product-settings).

## From data point to price change

From the synchronized offers, PricePirate calculates prices, [total prices](/docs/en/guide/concepts/total-price), and your position. This data appears in the [product metrics](/docs/en/guide/insights/metrics) — one row per product — and in the [reports](/docs/en/guide/reports/overview), which summarize the same trend across the entire marketplace.

Your [pricing strategy](/docs/en/guide/pricing/strategies) evaluates the most recent competitor data and derives a target price for your offer — for example, to undercut or match the cheapest competitor. When the target price differs from your current Shopify price, a **pending** price change is created.

You stay in control of every change: either you [review](/docs/en/guide/price-changes/review) the pending price changes yourself, or you let matching changes be [applied automatically](/docs/en/guide/price-changes/auto-apply). Only then is the new price written to your Shopify product.

<Note>
  When you contact support, include the product variant, listing, and last synchronization when possible. That is the fastest way to trace a case.
</Note>

To set up this loop for the first time, see the [Quickstart](/docs/en/guide/getting-started/quickstart).