While most online platforms are doubling down on AI, LatestDeals.co.uk, a UK-based deals and shopping site, is taking a different route—keeping real people at the centre of shopping. At a time when every penny counts in the UK’s ongoing cost-of-living crunch, the site has risen to over 3 million users (as of July 2025). It says a lot about what shoppers actually want: honest, human-curated recommendations. Co-founder Tom Church puts it plainly:
“We consciously positioned Latest Deals as a community-first platform. Our deals are found, shared, and rated by genuine people. Consumers trust real experiences over AI suggestions, especially when money is tight.”
Back in 2016, when most deal sites were being swallowed up by corporate takeovers or drowning in spammy ads, three friends—Tom Church, Deepak Tailor, and Tom Kelsey—decided to try something different. They built LatestDeals.co.uk to be the opposite of all that: no venture capital, no pushy marketing, and now – no AI fluff.
As Deepak Tailor puts it, “Our core idea was straightforward: create a space where the users themselves determine the value of deals, free from corporate influence or opaque algorithms.”
Trust isn’t easy to come by these days—especially when everything seems like it was written by a bot. But that trust has been central to LatestDeals.co.uk’s growth. The numbers back it up: over 400,000 active daily newsletter subscribers, 240,000+ Instagram followers, and 5 Facebook groups and Pages with more than 500,000 followers in total. The site’s community is properly active too. Members who regularly post deals can rack up enough points to earn over £200 a month in Amazon vouchers—real money saved just for sharing what works.
“What we’ve noticed with competitors who have gone down the AI route is that it’s leading to a long-term reduction in active user numbers. I joke that it’s like custard: Everyone likes it, but there’s only so much vanilla you can take.” Says Tom Church.
The platform’s reach hasn’t gone unnoticed. Latest Deals has popped up in over 4,000 media mentions, with features on everything from Good Morning Britain and ITV’s Lorraine to The Guardian and The Mirror. And the community’s impact is just as impressive—internal data shows users have collectively saved more than £50 million since day one.
“AI has killed the web”, says Tom Church, “Global search traffic is down in every category except for hobby forums. Why’s that? People want human responses and crucially, with human connection too.”
That’s not to say Latest Deals is anti-tech. Quite the opposite—they’ve built smart tools that help real people save more, without handing over the reins to machines. There’s a supermarket price comparison tool that shows you where your shop is cheapest, the UK’s only Amazon unit pricing checker, and even a Domino’s voucher aggregator that finds local discounts in seconds. Their Black Friday app hit #1 on the UK App Store in 2017 with half a million downloads, and the browser extension auto-applies voucher codes, saving people time and a few headaches at checkout.
As co-founder Tom Kelsey puts it, “Our technology exists purely to streamline savings and support our human community—not to replace them. AI can be fantastic and has its uses. For example, we use it to analyse product images for safety.”
The company was bootstrapped since inception and to-date, Companies House records show no external investors or shareholders. For Tom Church, staying independent wasn’t the easy route—but it was the right one.“
Bootstrapping meant slower initial growth,” he admits, “but it allowed us to prioritise genuine user value over short-term profits. If we had institutional investors they’d be breathing down our necks to replace all human interactions with AI as a cost-cutting exercise. But that is short-term thinking. In a world of AI, any human content will be given extra value.”
As the site keeps growing, one thing hasn’t changed: the belief that real people give better advice than any algorithm ever could. At a time when it’s hard to tell what’s real online, LatestDeals.co.uk has built a space where trust still matters. Whether you’re hunting for your next bargain or just want to see what others are saving on, it’s worth a visit—or try the Black Friday app, which continues to set the bar for crowd-powered savings.
