How the data is collected
The figures come from Price Claim Monitor, which checks EU web shops every night.
- Only public product pages are read: the pages any shopper can open without an account.
- Each shop is visited once per night.
- Every shop's robots.txt and crawl delays are respected.
- Bot protection, logins, CAPTCHAs and rate limits are never bypassed. A shop that blocks the check is left out.
- The data is stored in the EU.
- Only market-level figures are published. No shop, product or price is named here.
Definitions
- Discount
- A product shown with a comparison price (crossed out, a “was” price or a recommended price) above its selling price.
- Label
- What the page says the comparison price is. Each discount is recorded with one label type:
- Own earlier price
- The comparison price is described as the shop's own earlier price.
- Recommended price (RRP)
- The comparison price is described as a recommended or list price from the manufacturer or supplier.
- 30-day lowest price
- The comparison price is described as the lowest price of the previous 30 days.
- Other wording
- The comparison price has some other wording.
- No label
- A comparison price is shown with no wording that says what it is.
- 30-day lowest price shown
- A discount whose page also shows the lowest price of the previous 30 days, whatever its label. This is counted separately from the label types, because a comparison price based on the shop's own 30-day lowest price is recorded as “Own earlier price”.
- Claimed saving
- The saving the page implies: (comparison price − selling price) ÷ comparison price. The median is the middle value: half of the discounts claimed more.
- Out of stock
- Discounts whose page showed the product as unavailable, out of the discounts whose page showed a stock status at all.
Some shops explain their comparison price only in an info icon or pop-up; until our reader covers this, those shops are left out of the label figures.
The sample
A sample of 69 web shops in 7 countries with prices in the last 7 nights (8 Oct to 14 Oct 2026); figures are for the latest night unless stated. Not the whole market. The sample covers 69 shops in 7 countries and 13 product categories. It is a sample, not the whole market. Figures describe what was observed in this sample only.
Constant panel: the same 10 shops with prices on all 8 nights, so nights compare like for like.
The disclosure rule
Groups with fewer than 5 shops, fewer than 3 shops showing discounts, or one shop making up more than half of the group's discounts are not shown. This keeps any single shop from being recognisable in a country or category figure. Last night, 5 countries and 7 categories were held back this way. They still count towards the overall figures.
Netherlands: under review (label reading being verified)
What the index is not
This is an observation of how prices are displayed, not a legal assessment of any shop. A label type or a missing label says nothing on its own about whether a price is right.
Updates
The checks run every night; the index is updated weekly. This edition covers 8 nights from 7 October 2026 to 14 October 2026.
Questions about the method: contact us.