An FBA scanner app for iPhone: how retailscout works in a UK shop

retailscout is now an iPhone app. It went live on the UK App Store on 6 November 2026, and it carries the whole of retailscout into one place on your phone: the FBA scanner, the deal analysis, the store map and the route between shops.

This post is about the scanner: what happens when you point it at a barcode in a UK shop, what it shows you, and where it stops. If you want the wider picture of scanning apps and how they compare, our guide to the best retail arbitrage apps for UK sellers covers that.

What an FBA scanner app has to do

In a shop you have one question per product: if I buy this at this price and sell it on Amazon UK, what do I make? A scanner app earns its place by answering that quickly, in a real aisle, with numbers you trust. That means three things.

• It reads the barcode with your phone's camera, without typing.
• It works the profit on your own fees and settings, not a generic guess.
• It shows whether the product actually sells, and whether the price is holding.

Scan a barcode, see the deal

Point the camera at a barcode and retailscout opens the analysis for that product. You see the estimated profit and ROI, worked out on the cost and fee settings you saved, alongside monthly sales, the seller count, the Buy Box history and the price charts. There is also a Scout AI score out of 100, a quick read on whether the deal is worth a closer look.

Change the price you are paying and the figures update, so you can see what a further reduction would do before you decide. It is the same analysis as our FBA deal analyser on the web, so a product checked in the shop and one checked at your desk are judged the same way.

Store mode: scan the whole aisle

One product at a time is slow when a clearance end has thirty lines on it. Store mode keeps the camera open and scans each new barcode as you move along, building a strip of cards as you go. Each card shows the max cost, the most you can pay and still clear the minimum ROI you set, and the monthly sales. Tap any card for the full analysis, then go back to scanning.

That turns the aisle into a shortlist. You skip anything that does not sell or cannot clear your ROI at the shelf price, and spend your time on the few that can.

When the signal drops

Big stores are bad for reception, and the back wall is usually the worst of it. If you scan with no signal, the scan waits on your phone rather than failing, and it is looked up when signal comes back. Be clear about what that means: the profit figures need a connection, so you see them once you are back online, not before.

A real find, read through the app

Here is one from our founder's own buying: Seven Seas Pregnancy capsules from Morrisons at £2.25. Read through retailscout on 2 November 2026, on VAT-registered settings, the sum came out at a sell price of £12.24 (the 90-day average Buy Box), an estimated profit of £3.69 a unit after all Amazon fees, and an ROI of 164%. The full working, including why the seller count mattered, is in our Morrisons clearance guide.

That is not a promise of the same find. It is what the scanner is for: a sum you can trust, worked out in the aisle before you pay.

More than a scanner

The scanner is one part of the app. The same membership finds stores across 17 UK retailers on a map, plans a multi-stop route between them and hands it to your maps app, and shows the community Finds feed of what other members are buying. So you can plan the trip, drive it and scan on it without switching apps.

How to get it

The app is for iPhone, on the UK App Store, and needs iOS 15 or later. It has no payments in it: you start your membership on the retailscout website, then sign in to the app with the same account. On a computer, retailscout runs in the web browser with the same scanner and analysis.

retailscout is £14.99 a month, with a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.