Competitor price monitoring

Prices, promotions, availability: monitor the complete competitive offer.

KaraK automates competitor price monitoring by matching your catalogue with offers visible on the market. It consolidates the signals that genuinely change their competitiveness: current or promotional price, availability, variants and, where available, delivery conditions.

Exact matching measures direct competition. Similar matching extends coverage to private labels, exclusives and equivalents — without mixing the two.

Discuss your monitoring needs Understand product matching
  • current & promotional prices
  • availability & variants
  • exact & similar coverage
  • lowest delivery price

The fundamentals

Useful price monitoring tracks what the customer can actually order

The listed price is not enough. A promotion on an unavailable product, different packaging or high delivery costs tells another story. Every signal remains linked to the product page where it was observed.

Prices and promotions

Current, crossed-out or promotional price, currency and difference from your reference price.

current price · original price · difference

Availability

Available or unavailable product, variants and displayed lead times: an out-of-stock price does not carry the same weight as an offer that can be purchased.

stock · variants · displayed lead time

Delivery conditions

Cost and lead time for the cheapest delivery option, collected for a reference destination — usually the country capital.

minimum cost · free-delivery threshold · lead time · reference destination

Coverage quality

Share of the catalogue found by website, brand or category, with exact and similar coverage measured separately.

exact · similar · not covered

The similar-matching lever

Two different products. One defensible comparison.

ALVIN and KALLAX share neither a brand nor a product reference. ALVIN's castors, KALLAX's stand and their different finishes rule out an “exact” verdict. Their structure, use, materials and overall dimensions do, however, make them comparable as similar products.

// documented example

Open four-cube shelving units

verdict recorded

Conforama SKU 763192
Light-wood ALVIN shelving unit with four open cubes and castors

ALVIN

Sonoma oak · four cubes · castors

H 87.4 × W 81.2 × D 39 cm

€79.99 observed price*
IKEA Ref. 594.426.28
White-stained oak-effect KALLAX shelving unit with four open cubes on a white stand

KALLAX with stand

White-stained oak effect · four cubes · stand

H 94 × W 77 × D 39 cm

€74.99 observed price*

Verdict: similar matching, not exact matching. The two products are comparable under the criteria detailed below.

  • Structure

    4 open cubes matches on both sides

  • Materials

    Boards + paper foil same technical family

  • Dimensions

    Maximum difference: 7.5% within the ±10% tolerance

  • Finish

    Two light-wood finishes close, but not identical
Example documented from public product pages; images from Conforama and IKEA. * Prices observed during processing in May–June 2026, not updated in real time. Price is used for monitoring; it does not determine the similarity verdict.

Within similar coverage, this pair becomes a positioning benchmark. It remains excluded from exact coverage: the two measures are never combined without distinction.

Read the full method

From scope to delivery

Monitoring configured for your markets, teams and tools

  1. 01

    Define the monitoring scope

    Products, websites and countries to monitor, collection frequency, equivalence rules and reference destination for delivery.

  2. 02

    Collect and match

    Agents read offers, normalise their signals and connect them to the right product — exact or similar.

  3. 03

    Measure and use

    Coverage, differences, availability and sources become available in a dedicated interface or feed your BI, pricing tools and information system.

What your teams can use

Exact and similar coverage, prices and promotions, availability, delivery, differences, URLs and observation dates.

interface · user access · alerts · files · database · API

KaraK feeds your strategy, BI, pricing rules or interface with data that can be checked. The level of automation and decision workflows adapt to your organisation.

// production experience

More than one million

matching operations performed in one month

12 years

building price-intelligence tools, from data collection to quality control

France · Europe

platform hosted in France, data processed exclusively in Europe

The published volume measures operations started by the engine; an operation may or may not result in a match.

Frequently asked questions

Implementation questions

What is the difference between price monitoring, competitive intelligence and Price Intelligence?

Price monitoring tracks prices, promotions, stock and sales conditions across a defined scope. Competitive intelligence can also cover assortment, content and new products. Price Intelligence uses these observations to analyse positioning and guide pricing decisions.

What data can competitor price monitoring track?

KaraK collects the current, original or promotional price, currency, availability and variants. For delivery, the comparison retains the cheapest available option for a reference destination, usually the country capital. This rule is set when the scope is defined and applied consistently across every website.

How does similar matching increase coverage?

Exact matching only covers the same products. Similar matching adds equivalent products under written criteria and a consistent brand tier. It makes private labels, exclusives and ranges without a strictly identical product comparable, while remaining separate from the exact coverage rate.

How can results be accessed and used?

Depending on the chosen setup, results are available in a dedicated interface with user access, views and alerts, or delivered into your BI and pricing tools through files, a database or an API. Frequency, history and permissions are configured with the service.