The Australian price-comparison app ranked #8 on Shopping top-grossing. Its product is nearly identical to the free Zyft: Gated wins with an existing TikTok account and a paywall

Launched Oct 8, Gated is an Australian barcode price-comparison app that hit the top 10 of the Australian App Store Shopping Top Grossing chart within a month, peaking at #6. Functionally it is a clone of Zyft, four years late and slower. It charted thanks to three things: the founder was already selling an Amazon retail arbitrage course and had a TikTok account that filmed "stores charge more than online" content; Oct 26 put a hard paywall on a category where everyone else is free; and the bar for the Australian shopping chart is surprisingly low. Below, how much each of the three mattered, and which one you can actually take away.

A 24-second Coles video

In Oct 5, three days before the app went live, TikTok account @gatedprice posted a 24-second video captioned only "Scan and save #coles #ripoff." It shows someone in front of a Coles shelf scanning a product's barcode, and the phone shows a cheaper price elsewhere. By Nov 6 it had 121k views and 119 comments (TikTok post page, 11-06).

The comments basically predict the app's whole situation. The most-liked comment is a dig: "What about the one next to it that's $4.5, lol", meaning the shelf sticker already shows the discount. The second most-liked: "Make an Apple version, nobody uses Android." Then a run of "what's this app called," "teach us, grandma's here," "downloaded now," "already signed up, waiting for you to launch." Several others make the same point: "Zyft has been doing this for years. I've used it for ages. It's not just supermarkets, it does shoes, appliances, TVs too" and "How is this different from Zyft?"

So the demand is there and people are willing to click. But anyone who knows the space reacts with: there's already a free one.

What it is

The first line of the store page: "Gated helps you find the best price on the things you buy – in seconds." Scan a barcode or search a product name to compare prices across Woolworths, Coles, Chemist Warehouse, JB Hi-Fi, Big W, Harvey Norman, Bunnings, Amazon AU and others. Also weekly specials, price-drop alerts, and a "you saved" tally. No sign-up or login.

The developer, Gated Market Pty Ltd, has only this one app, on both iOS and Android.

The money model changed partway through. It started free, earning commissions on shopping links. The description still says: "Gated is free and earns a commission on some links… As an Amazon Associate." In Oct 26, the 1.3.0 version switched to Gated Pro: A$9.99 a month or A$39.99 a year, and the core features don't work without a subscription. In Nov 5, the 1.4.0 version backed off a little: "We've turned off the subscription page and given you 5 free scans."

How it climbed the charts

(App Store Australia, 10-28 to 11-06. No chart data before 10-28. It charted in no other country.)

The two timelines line up. The paywall went live on 10-26, and two days later the app was charting at #12 on Top Grossing. 10-29 One reviewer left a one-star rating: "Came in because of all the hype, and it's a paid app with no free trial. No way to tell if it actually works." Over the next few days the ranking slid, 11-04 dropping to #19. 11-05 then added "5 free scans," and 11-06 climbed back to #8.

Scale check: iOS has 14 ratings in total, and only 2 more in 7 days. On Google Play, installs are 10-29, and that's 695,11-06 and 1,098 (Google Play, 11-06). A number this size makes the top 10 only because the chart is so empty: on the same day, #19 Tallo had just 4 ratings, and #22 Dete had 36. The revenue behind #8 on the AU shopping Top Grossing chart is an inference, somewhere under a few hundred AUD a day, and can't be verified.

Where users come from

1. A TikTok account repurposed for an app. @gatedprice has 4,503 followers and 632 posts (TikTok, 11-06). From 2025 September to mid-2026, the account posted Amazon selling and retail arbitrage content, like "Big W losing money #amazonfba" and "Made over $2000 here's how." One post, "Did you know anyone can sell on Amazon," got 77k views. In October 2026 the whole account switched to promoting the app, with the bio changed to "Download Our App Today" linking to the app landing page.

In October it posted 45 videos, with about 300K views combined, its best month for views. Besides the one above with 121K views, there's 10-21 one for Bunnings (41K) and 10-01 one for Woolworths (25K). The formula is fixed: film the gap between the in-store price and the online price, add a line like "This is nuts" or "There is no way", tag #coles #woolies #save, and post 2 to 4 videos a day. By November, most single videos were getting only a few hundred to a thousand-plus views, so momentum is fading.

2. Instagram account @gatedprices, 12.2k followers, bio "Download Our APP To Start Saving." It posts the same content as TikTok and has run giveaways.

3. The original business. The landing and terms pages both sit on gatedseller.com.au, a site that originally sold training for Australian Amazon sellers, calling itself "one of Australia's fastest-growing Amazon communities." Its Whop store sells a retail arbitrage course (A$1,000), one-on-one coaching (A$3,500), and a monthly membership. There is also a UK sister site, sellercircle.co.uk. Retail arbitrage means finding goods cheaper in stores and reselling them online, so the app is essentially that internal product-sourcing tool made mass-market, with ready-made video material and an audience.

4. Whether it runs paid ads is unknown. Nothing showed up in the Meta or TikTok ad libraries, but that doesn't mean it isn't advertising. I found no media, X, or Reddit discussion of it. The one-star review's "so much hype" most likely refers to the videos on TikTok and Instagram.

Who it's competing with

This category is crowded, and nearly all of it is free. Gated's one difference from everyone else is that it charges.

What it actually wins on

• The content is the product demo. Every video shows "scan this, find it's half the price elsewhere." Anyone who watches to the end wants the app, and nothing needs explaining in between.
• The traffic was ready-made. An account already talking about "stores are pricier than online" only had to swap its link from course sales to app downloads. Cold start cost next to nothing.
• Charging in a free category bought the ranking. Everyone else was free, so the chart was empty and a few subscriptions were enough for the top 10. The ranking in turn lent it some credibility.
• But the paywall is where word of mouth leaks. Users arrive from a video, hit the subscription page immediately, and free Zyft sits right next to it. That's what the one-star review, the two-star review, and the run of "how is this different from Zyft" comments on TikTok are all about. It's hard to be optimistic about renewal rates (my inference).

If it were you

The one-line verdict: Don't copy this as an Australian price-comparison app. The category is crowded, free, and already has Zyft. What's worth taking is the playbook: turn the action your content account keeps demonstrating into an app and sell it to your own audience.

Who it suits: Anyone with a niche content account, even a few thousand followers, where the same "action" keeps appearing in your videos: checking prices, counting calories, identifying plants, measuring distances, comparing specs. That action can become a paid tool.

Who it doesn't suit: People with no audience of their own who want to win on the comparison feature itself. Comparison requires pulling data from many retailers and maintaining it constantly, and at small scale you can't beat established free products. Gated itself is already being called slow by users.

How to do it:

1. Start by checking which of your (or a creator you could partner with) videos get the most views and which comments most often ask "what app is that?" That's the demand.
2. Build the narrowest version that's enough to demo on video.
3. Pick a low-barrier category chart: a small country or an obscure category, and check how many ratings the #10 to #20 apps have. A few to a few dozen means very few subscriptions can get you charted.
4. Don't put up a blanket paywall like Gated did at first. After the backlash it changed to "turn off the subscription page and give 5 free uses," then added a first-year discount and a cancellation save offer. You can start with that setup from day one.

How to get users: Follow its approach: post 2 to 4 short videos a day, use a fixed opening line plus local supermarket hashtags, and cross-post to TikTok and Instagram. One to two weeks before launch, open a waitlist and turn every "what's this app called" comment into a sign-up.

When to move: Its playbook has no window. You can use it any time. If you really want to do Australian price comparison, wait a month or two and see whether Gated holds a top-20 spot behind its paywall. If it can't hold, it suggests users here won't pay for comparison.

Signs you've read it wrong: (1) Gated drops out of the top 30 on the Australia Shopping Top Grossing chart before December, and TikTok views stay weak. That means the playbook only sustains one launch, and the content account's traffic runs out. (2) Conversely, if its rating count starts growing steadily and it holds the top 10, charging inside a free category can work, and the comparison business itself deserves another look.

Data and sources

• Ranking, ratings, reviews, and release notes: App Store Australia store page and Shopping Top Grossing chart, 10-28 to 11-06.
• Android installs: Google Play, 10-29 and 11-06.
• Subscription pricing and paywall rules: terms of service and the app landing page at gatedseller.com.au.
• TikTok videos, view counts, and comments: TikTok @gatedprice, 11-06; Instagram @gatedprices.
• The original business: gatedseller.com.au, the gatedmarket store on Whop, sellercircle.co.uk.
• Competitors: the Zyft website and 7 News coverage; App Store Australia and Google Play, 11-06.