How we compare prices
Where every price on SoukCompare comes from, how often we check it, how we decide two shops sell the same product, and the rules behind "cheapest".
Shops cannot pay to change the order. The cheapest current price comes first, always.
Shops cannot pay to change the order
Every list is ordered by price and by nothing else a shop can buy. SoukCompare is free, with no ads. If paid placements ever appear, they will be clearly labelled and kept apart from the price order; the order itself is never for sale.
When several shops have the same lowest price, every one of them is called the cheapest, and the order in which they are named changes every day, so no shop is always first.
Where the prices come from
We compare 98 shops. For most of them we read the prices each shop publishes openly on its own website or public product feed, at a gentle pace (at least 2 seconds between pages). We never get past a login, a CAPTCHA or a site's bot protection.
A few shops cannot be read that way. Their prices come from uploads: pages, spreadsheets, flyers and screenshots of their apps saved by a person browsing normally (Carrefour, Happy, Rammal, Toters Fresh, noknok), and Amhaz Original's price lists posted on Instagram, read through Meta's official API. Every uploaded row passes the same price checks as the others.
Medicines: the official public price from the Ministry of Public Health's Drugs Public Price List (the list of 19 October 2026), with the active ingredients and brand or generic status from the Lebanon National Drugs Database. The price is the same at every pharmacy.
How often we check
- Every night from 01:30 UTC (04:30 in Beirut in summer, 03:30 in winter) we read the shops, check every row and update the site, so new prices are online before people shop.
- Shops on Shopify are read in their own round during the day, from 05:30 UTC; their prices go online as soon as the round ends, or with the 20:30 UTC update.
- The big bookshops are read in the evening, from 20:30 UTC. Carrefour's website is read once a week, on Wednesday; its uploads any day.
- We look for a new Ministry medicine list every morning; the Ministry publishes one about once a month.
- If a shop's site fails one day, we keep its last good prices for up to 8 days, always with the date they were checked. Uploaded prices stay up to 21 days (7 days for phone price lists), and an offer leaves on its end date.
Fresh prices only for "cheapest"
Every price shows the day it was last checked. A price we have not seen for 3 days (unless its offer is still running) is shown greyed out as "last seen", and it is never called the cheapest and never used for a saving.
How we match the same product across shops
Most shops do not publish barcodes, so most products are matched by their names and sizes, with strict rules. A wrong match would make a false saving, so when in doubt we do not match.
- Groceries: the same words and the same size, or the same brand and size with a shared word; numbers in names (9oz, 15 years, 6 pieces) must be identical; pack counts are part of the product; bundles and multipacks are never matched; prices far apart are not matched.
- Electronics: the same part number, or the same brand, model codes and variant words, with prices within 1.6 times of each other; used or open-box items never join new ones.
- Books: by ISBN, or the same title and author when a shop gives no ISBN. Beauty: by barcode, or the same brand, size, strength (EDP or EDT) and name.
- Medicines: other brands count as the same medicine only with the same active ingredients, at the same strengths, in the same kind of dose form; biological medicines are never matched.
In our spot checks (October 2026) about 19 in 20 grocery matches were right. If you find a wrong one, report it: we split it.
Checks before a price is shown
A price is held back for review, not shown, when it is missing or zero, when the "was" price is not above the sale price, when the discount is over 70%, when a dollar price looks like a pound price, when an offer has already ended, or when it jumps more than 40% from its last price. If a shop suddenly lists fewer than half its usual offers, its whole day is held and the previous day stays on the site.
A discount counts only when the shop's regular price holds up against other shops' prices; in electronics a discount over 40% is shown only when another shop's price backs it. A price five times away from two or more other shops' price for the same item is left out.
Dollars, pounds and VAT
Prices are shown in US dollars. Pounds are converted at 89,500 LBP to the dollar, a fixed rate; shops that price in pounds are converted at the same rate. Medicine prices are the Ministry's pound prices exactly as published; its list gives dollar prices at 89,500 LBP (Decision 119/1).
Shops that list prices before VAT are shown with the 11% VAT added, and each of their prices says so, so you compare what you will actually pay. Delivery fees are not included: we do not have them.
Price history and price changes
We keep every day's price from 29 September 2026. A price change is listed only when the new price stood for at least 3 days and moved by 3% or more; short flickers and unbelievable jumps are left out.