How we compare prices

Where the prices come from

Retailers publish a product feed — a machine-readable list of what they sell, with prices, availability and images. We read those feeds directly. We do not scrape retailer websites, and we do not estimate or predict prices.

This means a price on ScandiDeals is the price the retailer published in its own feed, not a figure we calculated.

How often the prices are refreshed

Feeds are re-read roughly every three days. Every product page shows the date its prices were last checked, and that date is the honest answer to "how current is this".

Between refreshes a retailer can change a price, run a sale, or sell out. Always check the price on the retailer's own page before buying — that is the one you will actually pay.

How we know two retailers have the same product

We match products by EAN — the barcode number that identifies a specific product, size and colour. Two listings are only shown as the same product when their EANs match.

Matching on names instead would be easier and wrong: "Iittala Teema plate 21 cm white" and "Teema Plate, 21cm, White" are the same item, while "Teema plate 21 cm" and "Teema plate 26 cm" are not, and no amount of text similarity reliably tells those cases apart.

The cost of that choice is coverage. A retailer that does not publish EANs cannot be matched, and its products appear on their own rather than in a comparison.

Shipping, and what "cheapest" means

Where a retailer publishes a shipping cost in its feed, we show it and include it when working out which offer is cheapest overall. Where a retailer does not publish one, we cannot show it, and the comparison is on the item price alone.

That is a real limitation rather than a rounding error: a cheaper item with expensive delivery can lose to a dearer one with free delivery. Check the delivery cost at the retailer before deciding.

Currency and market

Each store quotes prices in its own currency, exactly as the retailer published them. We do not convert between currencies on product pages, because a converted price is a number no one will actually charge you.

Prices, availability and delivery differ between markets, so a comparison is only ever made within one market.

What we do not do

• We do not accept payment for placement or for a better position.
• We do not adjust the order of offers by commission rate.
• We do not write or solicit product reviews.
• We do not guarantee that a price is still correct at the moment you read it.

When we get it wrong

Feed data can be wrong, out of date, or mis-matched, and when it is, this site repeats the mistake. If you spot a price that does not match the retailer's own page, or two different products shown as one, please tell us through the contact page and we will fix it.