Temu vs Skroutz and Amazon: Which Actually Wins in Greece

By Stash by TipidNation · October 7, 2026 · 6 min read

Skroutz is where most Greek online shopping starts, often before the shopper has even settled on what to buy, which makes it a different kind of competitor than the local marketplaces elsewhere in this series. Amazon’s situation is just as distinct in the opposite direction: there’s still no amazon.gr. That leaves Temu’s flat bundle coupon sitting between a platform built around comparison shopping and its own delivery network, and a cross-border storefront that was never built for Greek addresses in the first place.

Skroutz Started as a Price Comparison Site, Not a Marketplace

Skroutz launched in 2008 as a price-comparison engine, the tool Greeks used to check whether a given price was actually good before buying anywhere. Skroutz Marketplace came later, letting merchants list and fulfill directly on the platform, but the comparison-engine roots still shape how it’s used: shoppers arrive already primed to rank a listing against every other seller carrying the same item. Temu runs on a completely different mechanic, one bundle coupon that credits a fixed amount once a cart clears a threshold, covered in how Temu coupon codes work. That threshold is set in euros for the Greece bundle value, calibrated independently of what a similar cart earns in another market, a gap why Temu coupon values differ by country explains in full.

Three Locker Networks Are Fighting Over the Last Mile, and Temu Isn’t One of Them

This is the part of the Greek market that genuinely has no equivalent elsewhere in this series. Skroutz Last Mile is rolling out its own battery-powered Infinity lockers from SwipBox, competing head-to-head with Box Now and ACS Points for the same real estate. Combined, those three networks now exceed 270,000 lockers across roughly 5,400 locations, and lockers already account for 30-40% of all courier deliveries nationwide. That’s infrastructure built specifically for Greek streets and apartment buildings, letting a Skroutz order skip a missed-courier call entirely. Temu has nothing comparable; it ships primarily from overseas, so transit typically runs one to two weeks, a window broken down fully in Temu shipping times, explained.

Amazon Checks Out Through Germany, Not Greece

There’s no amazon.gr, and there likely won’t be one soon; Greek e-commerce volume hasn’t been enough to justify Amazon building dedicated warehousing in the country the way it has in bigger EU markets. A Greek shopper who wants Amazon lands on amazon.de instead, which benefits from Germany’s relative proximity, shipments typically arrive in a few days rather than the week-plus a more distant Amazon storefront would take. It’s a narrower version of the gap Romania faces with the same German fallback, except Skroutz fills the domestic-platform role eMAG plays there, with a locker network that’s arguably further along.

A 24% VAT Floor That Applies Before Any Parcel Clears Customs

Greece’s standard VAT rate sits at 24%, the highest of any market this series has covered, with reduced 13% and 6% rates on a narrower set of goods, plus temporary lower rates of 17%, 9%, and 4% that still apply on five Aegean islands through the end of 2026. For imports, non-EU parcels valued at €150 or under continue to clear through the EU’s IOSS scheme, so VAT gets collected at checkout instead of showing up as a surprise charge at the border. It’s tempting to read that 24% as a Temu-specific tax since the bundle math makes it visible, but it applies just as evenly to a Skroutz marketplace order or an Amazon.de parcel shipped into the same address.

Where a Return Actually Gets Resolved

All three platforms operate under the EU’s 14-day statutory right of withdrawal, with Greece’s General Secretariat of Commerce and Consumer Protection enforcing it domestically, so the legal floor doesn’t shift based on which platform gets picked. What shifts is how quickly a return actually resolves. Skroutz returns typically route back through the same locker and courier infrastructure that delivered the order, so a drop-off is close to home and fast to process. Amazon.de’s cross-border return system handles the Germany-Greece leg about as smoothly as any EU return gets. Temu’s window is generous on paper, commonly 90 days as covered in Temu return policy, explained, but since that inventory is heading back outside Europe rather than to a domestic hub, full resolution takes noticeably longer. That’s a structural tradeoff of shipping from overseas, not a reason to question whether Temu is legit in the first place.

Which Shopper Actually Comes Out Ahead

Someone who wants a specific item today, or who’s already comparison-shopped a listing down to the best-ranked seller, has the strongest option in Skroutz, that’s precisely the use case the platform was built around. A shopper chasing Prime-style selection who doesn’t mind checking out on a German site has a workable fallback in Amazon.de. A larger, unhurried cart of mixed goods, where the flat bundle credit has room to apply and a week or two of transit isn’t a dealbreaker, is where Temu’s math tends to come out ahead. None of the three is the default answer for every basket in this market.

Checking the live offer on the Greece page only takes a minute, and it’s the only way to know whether the current bundle threshold beats whatever Skroutz listing or Amazon.de price is already in the tab next to it. A similar own-locker-network standoff plays out one country over with a different operator standing in for Skroutz, laid out in Temu vs Alza and Amazon in the Czech Republic, and the full list of markets Stash tracks is on the sitemap.

Questions Worth Answering