Carousell

Many people still look for Carousell Canada, Carousell Australia or Carousell NZ. According to Carousell's help centre, new sign-ups in those three countries have been paused since September 2023, and the markets it lists as available are Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Carousell has also grown through mergers. In 2019 it merged with OLX Philippines and, later that year, with Telenor's classifieds businesses, which brought Mudah in Malaysia and Cho Tot in Vietnam into the group.

Carousell works in the app and on the web, from a desktop browser too. Its protected checkout, the Buy button with Buyer Protection, is offered in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, but Carousell says it does not encourage cross-border deals and that the Buy button cannot be used for them. Buying from another country therefore means agreeing everything with the seller, at your own risk.

BuyHub searches Carousell through your own connection, with the free extension for Chrome or Firefox or the BuyHub app, and can put several Carousell countries in one search. Radar alerts work too, run from your own device rather than from BuyHub's servers.

Carousell is a mobile-first marketplace where private individuals buy and sell directly: a photo and a price are almost all a listing needs. It was founded in 2012 by students from the National University of Singapore, and the city-state remains its core market. It also runs separate sites in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan, among others, and even in Australia and Canada. Second-hand goods from private sellers dominate, though small businesses sell there too, and terms are negotiated in the app's chat.

Collectors come for the personal collections that end up for sale: Gundam kits, Hot Toys figures, LEGO, trading cards, K-pop photocards, retro video games and vinyl, often priced by local rather than international standards. Each country's site has its own currency and listings in English, Chinese, Malay or Indonesian. Many sales end in a face-to-face handover, so it is worth checking first whether a seller ships abroad.