Hydra Lister and SKU Grid Review
I’ve been buying items on Amazon and selling on eBay for some time and whilst I can guarantee it’s not a get rich scheme, there’s money to be made for those who are willing to put in some work setting the business up.
Initially I created my own software to carry out my Amazon to eBay dropshipping however it soon became apparent that I had to enlist the help of online software providers to scale the business. With a monthly turnover in the region of $12,500 and approximately 2,500 items listed, I’ve got a lot to thank Profit Scraper! I’m inundated with questions around competing software providers and today I’m going to take the time to review Hydra Lister and SKU Grid.
Let's break this post down...
Getting Started
Neither Hydra Lister or SKU Grid provide a complete package and as such people combine the two services to dropship on eBay using Amazon. Both Hydra Lister and SKU Grid allow Amazon to eBay arbitrage across US and UK platforms.
Hydra Lister Review
To test the products I initially signed up to Hydra Lister using the free trial. Like many other products on the market, Hydra Lister is capable of scraping items from a number of source markets. For the purposes of this review I’m purely going to be focusing on Amazon as a source market.
Hydra Lister unfortunately doesn’t have the functions to be able to run scrapes across Amazon and eBay to identify possible arbitrage opportunities. As such you’ll have to undertake this manually which you’d carry out by researching your competitors top selling items.
Once you’ve found a possible arbitrage item, you’ll need to load the Amazon ASIN to the Hydra Lister platform. Note you can list both single and multiple items at once. Let’s focus on a single item listing initially.
Within the platforms settings you’ll need to connect your SKU Grid and Hydra Lister Platforms together which will allow you to load items from Hydra Lister to SKU Grid and then directly on to eBay.
Using the Amazon ASIN number it’s simple to create a single listing. You can then undertake eBay Keyword SEO to the title. The Hydra Lister software has a relatively user friendly listing panel which will allow you to update the items description as you wish. Once you’re happy with the listing you’ll then need to upload to SKU Grid which will automatically upload to eBay.
SKUGrid Review
SKU Grid offer a 7 day free trial which I signed up to and was promptly provided with log in details. The platform home page takes a little getting used to and unlike most competing products pricing is based on a credit basis. I cover more on this further down the post.
The software provides both standard repricing settings reflecting eBay and PayPal fees, as well as more bespoke options. Connecting to your eBay account isn’t perhaps as straight forwards as other platforms but there are a number of walk throughs on Youtube prepared by SKU Grid which should help.
As you’ve uploaded the items through Hydro Lister these will automatically be within SKU Grid with standard monitoring functions being undertaken. You can choose the frequency of the price monitoring for which each pricing costs one credit.
Where the platform falls behind a number of competitors is the ordering functions. Unfortunately with SKU Grid this is a very manual process. You’ll need to undertake the following steps for every sale:
- Locate the item which you’ve sold on eBay on Amazon
- Add to cart
- Repeat for any other items sold
- Select to send items as a gift
- Add the address for each and every purchase
Whilst this may not seem time consuming when purchasing a single item, if you’re ever planning on scaling the business to say 30 sales a day or if even a lot more, this process will take a considerable amount of time. As you may have guessed, the software doesn’t support automatic purchasing.
So what are the costs?
Now that we know that the Hydra Lister / SKU Grid offers a limited service product in comparison to some of its competitors, it’s important to assess the costs.
Hydra Lister is charged on a monthly basis at $69 per month. For this you can list unlimited items from both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. As mentioned previously SKU Grid is based on a credits. Essentially what this means is, anytime a pricing check is undertake for an item you use one credit. You can chose the intervals at which the software runs, anywhere from hourly to daily. A list of all credit costs is outlined below:
| Action | Credit Used |
| Check price/stock of an item | 1 Credit |
| Check price/stock of “compare to” item | 1 Credit |
| Instant price check (when adding item) | 1 Credit |
| Reprice a single item at eBay | 1 Credit |
| Reprice a single item at Amazon | 1 Credit |
| Buy Box Owner: per successful algorithm run | 1 Credit |
Now to test value for money. In the table below I’ve set out the combined cost of Hydra Lister and SKU Grid in comparison to some full service providers on the market. We’ve assumed that items within SKU Grid would be checked every 2 hours (the same basis Profit Scraper).
| Hydra Lister / SKU Grid | Pricematik | Profit Scraper | |
| Identify profitable opportunities | No | Yes | Yes |
| Scraper Items from Amazon | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Address Inputting | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Ordering | No | Yes – additional cost | Yes – additional cost |
| Cost for 1000 items | $128.99* | $100 | $97 |
| Cost per item | $0.13 | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| Cost for 2500 items | $188.99** | $145 | $167 |
| Cost per item | $0.08 | $0.06 | $0.07 |
| Cost for 5000 items | $278.99*** | $220 | $297 |
| Cost per item | $0.06 | $0.04 | $0.06 |
*(Hydra Lister $69 + SKU Grid $59.99)
**(Hydra Lister $69 + SKU Grid $119.99)
***(Hydra Lister $69 + SKU Grid $209.99)
The above clearly shows that the limited service combination of the combined platforms are considerably more expensive than the full service providers of Pricematik and Profit Scraper. Something I’d also highlight is that if you are listing 5,000 items, it will take huge amounts of time manually processing the various orders with the Hydra Lister / SKU Grid whereas it’s relatively straight forward with the other two platforms. These platforms can also automatically order items for a cost of $0.40 per sale.
Hydra Lister / SKU Grid Review Summary
Unlike it’s competitors Hydra Lister offers a number of source markets and seamlessly coordinates with SKU Grid. If your purpose is to purely undertake Amazon to eBay arbitrage, the ‘software package’ is lacking a couple of key components which will help to automate your business and save you considerable amounts of time going forwards. In addition the full service offerings outlined in this review are cheaper on a cost per item basis. For your unique opportunity to trial Hydra Lister and SKU Grid free of charge use the links below:
As always I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this joint SKU Grid and Hydra Lister review. For anyone who’s interested Profit Scraper have recently reopened membership. This was closed recently due to popular demand. I’d strongly recommend signing up to the 7 day trial with this link. You could also compare it to the Pricematik software which is currently offering a 14 day trial period if you use this link – Pricematik Free Trial.
If you’ve found this post interesting you may also find the following articles useful:
Retail Arbitrage – A guide to Amazon to eBay Arbitrage
Pricematik – Why I’m thinking of switching from Profit Scraper?
Amazon to eBay Arbitrage Diary
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Andrew Helfeen
Hello, Ben! Thank you so much for your review!! It’s very useful for me and I agree with you in plenty of points! But why in “Costs Block” you don’t compare number of available suppliers and flexibility of adjustments? Sku Grid have amazing number of suppliers (300 or something, I don’t remember clearly) and you can set any condition for your profit formula etc.
Thank you!