Idealo

German price comparison service

idealo.de

Type of site

| GmbH
Available in| German, English, Italian, French, Spanish
Headquarters| Berlin,

Germany

Owner| idealo internet GmbH
Founder(s)| Martin Sinner, Dr. Albrecht von Sonntag, Christian Habermehl & others
CEO| Dr. Albrecht von Sonntag
Jörn Rehse
Services| Price comparison
Operating income| €52,612,705.01 (2012)
Employees| 1100 (2022)[1]
Parent| Axel Springer SE (74,9%)
URL| idealo.de
Registration| Not required
Current status| Online

idealo internet GmbH is a German price comparison service launched in Germany in 2000, and since bought by the Axel Springer AG publishing company. The headquarters are in Berlin, Germany. The idealo website allows users to compare prices on a range of products from hundreds of shops.[2]

The company invested 2011 an undisclosed amount of money in Sparheld International GmbH which operates various coupon portals across Europe, including Sparheld.de in Germany and Reduc.fr in France.[3]

## History

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The company was founded by Martin Sinner, Albrecht von Sonntag, Christian Habermehl and others in 2000, using €500,000 in venture capital (of which €350,000 from KfW).[4] In July 2006, Axel Springer bought a 74.9% majority interest in idealo internet GmbH for an undisclosed sum.[5] Its 2012 revenues were €52,612,705.01.[6]

## Technology

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The idealo sites use a combination of screen scraping retailers' websites and CSV files supplied by the retailers themselves to create a unique database of product offers that is filtered by real people. These prices are matched against a bespoke backend database of products and this matching process is carried out by using a fuzzy logic automated matching system as well as large teams of people also acting as a quality control filter.

## Business model

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idealo is a consumer review and price comparison website that is similar to other price comparison services in that it is financed by advertisers on traffic quantities as well as quality. Companies advertising their products on idealo track user traffic and clicks through tracking pixels.[7]

Product offers displayed on the idealo website are normally ordered by price where the lowest is shown at the top of any listing, however on product listing pages the products are ordered by price, popularity, user rating or test results. Some other comparison shopping website such as Kelkoo and Shopping.com may feature only paying retailers and allow them to bid for position in the rankings.[citation needed]

Each idealo product page also features a place for product reviews and shows a trend graph of each product costs over time.

In 2019, Idealo stated it struggles to compete with other services like Google Shopping.[8]

## Notes

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1. ^ "Home – idealo careers". idealo internet GmbH.
2. ^ "Aiven Supports idealo, one of Europe's Leading Price Comparison Sites, as it Strives to Secure the Top Position". Aiven. Archived from the original on 2025-06-14. Retrieved 2025-07-31.
3. ^ "Über uns ≫ Gutscheinsammler.de". Gutscheinsammler.de.
4. ^ "Unsere 15 Besten". Berliner Morgenpost. 19 August 2012.
5. ^ "Springer kauft Preissuchmaschine idealo". Handelsblatt. 25 July 2006. Archived from the original on 28 February 2007.
6. ^ "Bundesanzeiger". Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
7. ^ "Case Study: idealo". Ingenious Technologies AG. Retrieved 2019-01-30.
8. ^ Foo Yun Chee (2019-11-28). "Axel Springer unit, others say Google still playing unfairly, want EU to act". Reuters. Archived from the original on November 28, 2019. Retrieved 2019-11-28.

## External links

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* idealo UK site
* idealo France site
* idealo Spain site
* idealo Italy site