BonPrijs grew from price comparison into price intelligence
Why comparing prices was not enough, and how BonPrijs expanded into multiple countries, inflation, and shrinkflation.
Omar Geerman
BonPrijs began with a simple, practical need in Aruba: finding where a basket of groceries costs less. It soon became clear that one current price tells only a small part of the story. To understand price movement honestly, you also need to know when it was measured, in which market, for what package size, and from which source.
Three markets, one product model
On 10 August, BonPrijs expanded into the Netherlands and Belgium. Products can be recognised across countries, while stores, currencies, availability, and prices remain local. Every store, receipt, and price observation therefore carries a market code. A user chooses a country and sees only the catalogue and shopping list that belong there.
A price becomes useful information only when its market, date, package, and source are known.
Receipts reveal offline prices
Not every supermarket offers a usable online catalogue. Contributors can therefore photograph a receipt. Text recognition extracts the lines, the contributor corrects mistakes, and a moderator reviews the price before publication. Those corrections also help the system understand future receipts from the same store more accurately.
Inflation is not only a higher sticker price
Behind the public comparison, BonPrijs maintains a private historical ledger. It reveals price movement by product and category. It can also identify shrinkflation: a package becomes smaller while the effective price per gram, millilitre, or item rises.
- Price observations are preserved instead of being overwritten by the newest value.
- Package sizes are normalised into comparable units.
- Country, store, date, and source stay attached to every observation.
- Corrections do not erase the evidence; they form an auditable chain.
The main product lesson
BonPrijs shows why a product can start small while still taking its data seriously. A grocery comparison tool can only grow into price intelligence when its foundation is traceable and aware of each market from the start.
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