How to Get Nintendo Switch 2 Restock Alerts

A Nintendo restock lasts minutes. The Switch 2 Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition went up for pre-order on September 8 and, as Tom's Hardware reported, sold out almost immediately at Nintendo's own store and the big US retailers. Within days, eBay listings for the $519.99 console reached $1,000.

The people who got one at list price were watching the product page when "Sold Out" flipped. This guide shows how to do that automatically with a stock tracker, which retailer pages to watch for the Switch 2 and its limited editions, and what to have ready so the alert turns into a purchase.

Updated September 17, 2026, after the Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct.

What Switch 2 stock looks like right now

Nintendo announced the Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition console at a dedicated Direct on September 8, alongside a matching Switch 2 Pro Controller with a Zelda display stand and the Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2. The console launches October 29; the game follows a week later. A day later, at the general Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced Metroid Ravenous with its own special edition.

Our own data shows the scramble. Over the previous two months, about three Visualping customers a week set up monitors on Nintendo's store pages. In the week of September 7, 242 customers started monitoring nintendo.com/us/store and another 61 started monitoring Nintendo's regional stores in the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Nearly all of those monitors were pointed at the Zelda edition console, the Pro Controller and stand, or Ocarina of Time.

Two facts work in your favor. Tom's Hardware notes that Zelda-themed consoles have historically been available on launch day, and that Nintendo's previous limited editions, the Switch OLED Tears of the Kingdom Edition and the Switch Lite Hyrule Edition, stayed in stock for months after launch. And retailers reopen pre-order allocations without announcing it. A monitor on the listing catches both.

Retailer pages to watch

The pre-order and launch-day allocations for Switch 2 hardware are split across a handful of US retailers. Each one has a product page for the Zelda edition console and the standard console, and those are the pages to monitor.

• Nintendo Store (nintendo.com/us/store): first to list new hardware, and the page that took 242 new monitors in a week
• Best Buy: a launch-day retailer for every Switch generation
• Target: product pages show in-store pickup availability by store
• Walmart: the retailer Tom's Guide found with stock during the first pre-order wave
• Amazon: pre-orders reopened at list price after the initial sellout, per Tom's Hardware
• GameStop: console and bundle pre-orders

Monitor all of them. The advice to pick two favorite retailers and watch closely made sense when checking meant refreshing by hand. With a tracker doing the checking, every extra page is another chance at the same console. Skip resale marketplaces for the console itself. A listing at double list price two weeks before launch is the reason to set a monitor.

Five habits that turn an alert into a console

1. Save your payment details first

Restock windows close in minutes. Time spent typing a card number is time someone else spends clicking "Place order".

2. Stay signed in

Create the retailer account now, sign in on the device you will buy from, and keep the session alive. Every login screen between the alert and the order button costs seconds you do not have.

3. Watch the button

For a stock tracker, the area to monitor is the "Sold Out" or "Pre-order" button and the line beneath it ("This item is currently unavailable"). That text changes the second stock appears, before any banner or homepage update.

4. Set the fastest check your plan allows

A page checked hourly can miss a fifteen-minute drop entirely. Plan frequencies are covered below.

5. Refresh during a drop

Retailers release consoles in small batches to slow resellers, and a drop can run in waves for half an hour. An "Out of Stock" a minute into a restock is often the gap between batches.

How a Nintendo Switch stock tracker works

Visualping is a website change detection tool used by more than 2 million people to monitor any web page for changes, including restocks and price drops.

You give it a product page and select the area to watch, usually the price and the stock button. Visualping takes a screenshot of that area on the schedule you set and compares each new screenshot with the last. When "Sold Out" becomes "Add to Cart", you get an email with the change highlighted, an AI summary of what changed, and a link straight to the page. On Nintendo Store product pages the AI suggestions include "The product becomes available for purchase", which is the restock condition in one click.

Retailer waitlists are the alternative, and they are uneven. Not every retailer offers one for every product, and a store's own notification competes with its marketing emails. A monitor you control sends one alert, to you, when the page changes.

Is it free?

Yes. The Free plan includes 150 checks a month across up to 5 pages, with checks as often as once an hour. That is enough to watch a listing or two and catch a restock that lasts a day.

For a launch like the Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition, where a restock can be gone in minutes, hourly is too slow. The Starter plan ($14 a month, or $120 a year) checks every 15 minutes. The Personal 5K plan ($35 a month, or $300 a year) checks every 5 minutes and adds SMS alerts, so the restock reaches your phone. The pricing page has the full comparison.

Does it only work for Nintendo?

No. The same monitor works on any product page. People run it as a PS5 stock checker, an Xbox Series X restock alert, a Pokémon TCG restock tracker and a Steam Deck stock alert. If you care about price more than availability, our Nintendo Switch 2 price tracker guide covers bundles and game price drops.

How to set up a Nintendo Switch 2 stock tracker

Step 1. Go to the Visualping homepage and paste the URL of the product page, for example the Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition listing at the Nintendo Store or Best Buy. You do not need an account to start.

Step 2. When the page loads in the preview, select the area around the stock button and the availability text. Under "Alert me when", pick "The product becomes available for purchase" from the suggestions, or type your own condition.

Pick the availability condition and the monitor watches the Sold out button for you

Step 3. Choose how often to check: hourly on the Free plan, every 15 minutes on Starter, every 5 minutes on Personal.

Step 4. Enter the email address for alerts and click Start Monitoring.

Step 5. Visualping emails you a link to set a password. Complete it, because it gives you a dashboard where every monitor and alert lives in one place, and where you can add SMS on a Personal plan.

Repeat for each retailer. A sensible set for this launch is the Zelda edition console at the Nintendo Store, Best Buy and Target, the Pro Controller and stand at the Nintendo Store, and Ocarina of Time wherever you buy physical games.

Set the monitors once. When a retailer reopens pre-orders, when launch-day stock appears on October 29, or when the first post-launch restock lands, the alert arrives while the button still says "Add to Cart".