You have found the Vallejo paint you need. Then you notice a bottle of paint in your basket and wonder whether it is a few pence cheaper somewhere else. Half an hour later you have twelve tabs open, three shipping calculators running and a slightly mad look in your eye. We have all been there.
Hobby Supermarket exists to close those twelve tabs for you. It is a UK price-comparison site built purely for the hobby: miniatures, paints, brushes, 3D printing and trading cards. Type in what you want and it shows you who has it and what it costs, from one page. Whether you are building a Warhammer 40k army or just topping up your paint rack, it is worth a bookmark.
You may know it by its old name. The site launched as Paint Picker and became Hobby Supermarket in October 2026, which is a fair rename given that it now covers far more than paint.
What Hobby Supermarket actually covers
The scale is the first thing that stands out. At the time of writing it tracks prices from more than 100 UK shops, with separate versions for the US, EU, Australia and Canada. The catalogue includes:
- Miniatures: Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy, Blood Bowl, Middle-earth, Bolt Action and Gunpla. That is more than 8,000 kits.
- Paints: over 10,000 paints from 39 brands, including Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter, AK Interactive and Mig, plus primers, sprays and paint sets.
- Brushes and tools: brushes from makers such as Rosemary & Co and Winsor & Newton, plus airbrushes, basing supplies and transport cases.
- 3D printing: printers, resin and filament from ELEGOO, Anycubic, Creality, Prusa and others.
- Trading cards: Magic, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana and more, including sealed product and sleeves.
Every listing shows the date it was last priced, so you are not trusting a number from last Easter. The site says the winning shop is decided by price alone, which is how comparison should work.
The tools are the real treat
Plenty of sites can list prices. What makes Hobby Supermarket worth coming back to is its set of free hobby tools:
- Paint Matcher: give the paint matcher a hex code, a paint name or a photo, and it finds the closest equivalents across brands, with prices. It is very handy when your favourite colour is discontinued or out of stock.
- Conversion charts: these map one paint range to another and tell you how close each match is. No more guessing which Vallejo matches a Citadel colour.
- Scheme Generator: pick a faction or a colour and it builds a base-to-highlight recipe from real paints.
- Shareable Paint List: put the paints for a scheme into one link. Anyone who opens it sees prices for their own country, which is ideal for tutorials and Discord servers.
- 40k Army Builder: plan a list from kits and boxes and see both the points and the real-world cost.
- 40k Dice Calculator: work out expected damage and the odds of wiping a unit before you commit your shooting. Your dice will still betray you, but at least you will know they were meant to roll better.
There is also a directory of independent hobby stores, which lists what each one stocks. That is a nice touch for anyone who would rather spend money with a real shop than with a faceless warehouse.
How it makes money (and why that is fine)
We like a site that is honest about its business model. Hobby Supermarket is independent and unofficial. It is not affiliated with Games Workshop or any other brand, and it earns affiliate commission when you click through and buy. It explains this openly on its own how-we-make-money page.
That is the normal way comparison sites pay their bills, and it costs you nothing extra. The thing to check is whether the ranking is fair, and a price-only rule is about as fair as it gets. Some partner shops also run exclusive codes through the site, so check its deals page before you check out.
Yes, Loaded Dice is on it
Full disclosure: Loaded Dice is one of the partner shops listed. At the time of writing, Hobby Supermarket tracks about 4,465 of our products and has us as the cheapest UK shop on around 1,688 of them. Around 760 of those are lines no other tracked shop stocks at all. You can see the numbers for yourself on our Hobby Supermarket shop page.
We will not pretend we win every comparison, because we do not, and nobody does. But we are glad there is a site that makes the maths transparent. If we are cheapest, you will see it. If we are not, you will see that too, and we would rather earn your order than hide from the comparison.
How to get the most out of it
Step 1: Compare the basket, not the bottle
- Delivery is set by each shop, so a paint that is 10p cheaper can cost you £4 more once postage lands. Look at the whole order.
- Build your full list first, then see which shop covers most of it.
Step 2: Use the paint tools before you buy
- Run your scheme through the paint matcher or conversion charts. You may already own a near-identical colour from another brand.
- If you are starting from scratch, a miniature painting kit is often cheaper than buying the same paints one at a time.
Step 3: Check the price date
- Prices move, especially around pre-orders and sales. A recent price date means a reliable number.
Step 4: Do not forget the extras
- Your army needs more than miniatures. Compare brushes, primers and basing materials too. That is where small savings add up.
Final Thought
Hobby Supermarket does one job, and it does it well. It saves you the twelve-tab shuffle, its paint tools are useful even when you are not buying anything, and it is upfront about how it is funded. Bookmark it, use it, and then spend the time you saved actually painting something.
Further reading: deciding what to spend that saved money on? See the most popular Warhammer factions, or get to grips with model kits in Gunpla grades explained.
Stock up your paint rack
Got your shopping list sorted? Paints, brushes and tools from Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter, AK and more, despatched fast from South Wales.
