Gixen has operated without a public security incident since 2006 and is widely considered safe in practice. The underlying architecture, however, requires you to entrust them with your eBay password. Zero Hour eliminates that by not asking for one. 'Safe' depends on your threat model.

Can I use Gixen and Zero Hour at the same time?

Yes. They don't conflict. Both place normal bids through eBay's standard endpoint. Just don't schedule both to snipe the same item; you'd be bidding against yourself.

What's the cheapest Gixen alternative?

On price alone, Gixen's paid tier ($2.95/month) and Zero Hour Pro Monthly ($2.95/month) are identically priced. Zero Hour's Lifetime plan ($49) is the cheapest option past 17 months and permanently eliminates both the renewal and the credential-sharing requirement.

Does Zero Hour run on redundant servers?

Zero Hour doesn't run on servers at all for bid placement. The bid fires from your own browser, so there are no servers to make redundant. The trade-off is that your browser needs to be running at snipe time.

Is Gixen open source?

No, Gixen is closed source. The Zero Hour extension ships unminified, so the actual bid-placement code is readable on your own machine.

What happens to my Gixen snipes when I switch?

Nothing automatic. Zero Hour and Gixen are independent systems. You'll need to cancel active snipes on Gixen and recreate them in Zero Hour. Bid history on Gixen remains in your Gixen account.

Can Gixen detect that I switched to Zero Hour?

No. Gixen only sees activity on its own service. Zero Hour fires bids directly from your browser through eBay's standard endpoint. Neither service has visibility into the other.

Will my eBay account be safer with Zero Hour?

Yes, strictly. Zero Hour never asks for or stores your eBay password, so a Zero Hour breach cannot expose what we don't have. With Gixen (or any server-side sniper), your credentials live in their database.

Gixen Alternative — Zero Hour (No Password Required)

Looking for a Gixen alternative that doesn't need your eBay password? Zero Hour is the only one. Gixen has run since 2006 and remains the most popular eBay sniper. Its paid tier is $2.95/month, which is exactly what Zero Hour Pro Monthly costs. The difference between the two services is one thing: Zero Hour never asks for your eBay password.

Best for: Gixen users who've ever felt a moment of hesitation while typing their eBay password into someone else's website. Or who maintain a separate "decoy" eBay account specifically because Gixen has their main one.

Not ideal for: users who close their browser overnight and need a server-side service that fires bids while their computer is off.

How Gixen works (and what you have to trust)

Gixen is a web app at gixen.com. You create a Gixen account with an email and password. Then, separately, you enter your eBay username and password into Gixen's settings page. Gixen stores those credentials on its servers in Florida. When an auction nears its close, Gixen's server signs into your eBay account on your behalf and places the bid.

The model is simple, the price is reasonable ($2.95/month for unlimited snipes), and the service has 20 years of operational track record. None of that changes the underlying trade-off:

Your eBay credentials are stored on Gixen's server. They've never had a public breach, but the data is sitting there.
Bids fire from Gixen's servers' IP addresses, which sometimes triggers eBay's risk engine. This is a known issue documented across Reddit threads.
If Gixen's server is down at the moment of your snipe, the snipe doesn't fire. Gixen runs redundant infrastructure to mitigate this, but it's still infrastructure you depend on.
You have to trust Gixen with the same password you use for everything else. Many Gixen users maintain a separate eBay account just for sniping as a workaround.

How Zero Hour solves it

Zero Hour is a Chrome extension, not a website. The bid fires from your own machine, using your own browser, with your own eBay cookies. There is no Zero Hour server in the bid-placement loop at all.

Specifically:

No Zero Hour account. No email signup. No password creation.
No place to type your eBay password. There is literally no input field for it anywhere in the extension.
Bids fire from your IP. eBay sees them exactly as if you'd placed them manually.
Your snipe data lives in chrome.storage.local on your computer. Uninstall the extension and it's all gone.

The trade-off in one paragraph

Gixen's server is always on, so it can fire a bid at 3 AM while you sleep with the laptop closed. Zero Hour can't. It needs your browser running at the moment of the snipe. In exchange for that requirement, Zero Hour never asks for your eBay password. For users who snipe in the evening on a desktop they can leave on, the trade-off is heavily one-sided in Zero Hour's favour.

Feature-by-feature

Pricing

Gixen Free: free, with ads, a 60-second login delay, and a few snipes per week. Gixen Paid: $2.95/month, unlimited snipes with redundant servers, but still requires your eBay password. Zero Hour Free: 1 active snipe at a time with unlimited completed history. Zero Hour Pro Monthly: $2.95/month. Zero Hour Pro Lifetime: $49 once. $2.95/month matches Gixen's paid tier exactly. The lifetime plan is the clear winner past 17 months, and Gixen has no lifetime option at all.

Reliability

Gixen claims roughly 95 to 98% reliability depending on plan. Zero Hour targets the same window, closer to 99.5% under typical conditions (Chrome running, computer awake, eBay session valid). The failure modes differ: Gixen's is server outages; Zero Hour's is the user accidentally closing Chrome.

UI

Gixen's interface predates flat design. It works, but every interaction goes through a full page load. Zero Hour is a 400x600 popup that responds instantly. Every state transition is animated, every countdown ticks live, and every result is visible without leaving the popup.

Auditability

Gixen is closed source. You trust the binary that runs on their servers. Zero Hour ships unminified. Right-click the icon, choose Inspect popup, open Sources, and you'll see the actual code firing your bids. Completely different transparency models.

Multi-region support

Both work on ebay.com, ebay.co.uk, ebay.com.au, ebay.de, and other major regions. Both handle currency conversion correctly when placing bids in non-USD listings.

Group bidding

Gixen supports grouped snipes ("snipe this OR this OR this, stop after one wins"). Zero Hour does not in v1. It's a planned v2 feature once single-snipe UX is fully polished.

What Gixen does better

To be fair:

Sniping while your computer is off. Server-side wins this outright.
Group bids and OR-snipes. Mature on Gixen.
20 years of reputation. Gixen has been operating since 2006; Zero Hour launched in 2026.
20 years of accumulated features (group bids, OR-snipes, multi-account) that Zero Hour hasn't matched yet.

Migrating from Gixen

The migration takes about three minutes:

Install Zero Hour from the Chrome Web Store.
In Gixen, cancel any active snipes you'd like to move. No need to delete the account if you'd prefer to keep both running.
For each item, paste the URL into Zero Hour's Add Snipe sheet. Set your max. Save.
Optional: in Gixen, change your eBay password (since they've had it). Your browser will pick up the new session automatically.

If you're moving permanently, deleting your Gixen account also removes your eBay credentials from their database.

The Gixen alternative that doesn't need your eBay password.