Product codes and barcode search

What kinds of codes there are

Codes differ in who assigns them and where the code is unique.

What follows from this

• Prices can be compared between shops only by EAN barcode — that is why on the site every barcode has its own price history page.
• An article number compares prices within one chain: the same number in two chains does not mean it is the same product.
• IKPU is too general to identify a product, and the DataMatrix serial number is too specific. Neither of them replaces a barcode.

Country by barcode

The first three digits of an EAN-13 barcode are the prefix of the national GS1 organization that issued the code to the manufacturer. It is the country of registration of the manufacturer or brand owner, not the country of production: a product with code 478 could have been made in China and one with code 460 in Uzbekistan. Look for the country of production on the packaging.

On a product page the country is shown like this: “country of production” if it is on the price tag or in the price record, “country by barcode” by the prefix. Products of each country with sellers and brands are collected in the section Countries: a product with no country on the price tag gets there by the barcode prefix.

Product barcodes on the site by country of registration: 7218 barcodes, 62 countries. Example — a link to the price history of one product.

Not a country: 20–29 is a shop's internal code (a product sold by weight, own packaging), 977 is magazines (ISSN), 978 and 979 are books (ISBN). The full list of prefixes can be found at GS1.

Weighed fruit and vegetables have no barcode of their own: the price tag and the scale sticker carry the shop's code 2…, with no country in it. Look for the country on the sticker on the fruit itself or on the box (“Produce of South Africa”, “Product of Egypt”), and if the sticker has the packer's barcode, by its prefix: 600–601 is South Africa, 622 is Egypt, 611 is Morocco. “Africa” on the price tag of oranges and mandarins usually means South Africa: they are sold from May to December, and in the off-season Egyptian ones.

Search by code

The “Barcode or article number” field is the second one in the header of every page. Enter a barcode, a store article number, an equipment model code (SM-S942B) or our own 28… code in full — spaces and case do not matter.

• The code is found on one page — the site opens the product's price history at once.
• The code occurs for several products (for example, the same article number in different chains or a model in different colours) — a list of matches opens, with the name, shop, latest price and date.
• Code not found — it will say “not found”: there is no such product in the catalogue yet. For a barcode the site will name the country by prefix (how to read this), and for a shop's internal code 2… it will say that this is an internal code and has no country in it.

Under the list of matches and under “not found” there is a search field of its own with the code and a “Find” button (on a phone also “Scan”): you can correct the code, enter another one or scan a new one right there, without returning to the page header.

This search looks for an exact match of the code. A product by name, a shop, an address or a brand is searched for by the first field of the header — “Product, shop, code” (site search): the beginning of a word is enough, case and script do not matter, “кока кола” will also find “Coca-Cola”. A barcode or article number typed in it in full will be found too — matches by code come first, and a code with one page opens it at once. This field has no scanner; a weight code from a sticker and our own 28… code with a weight are handled only by the “Barcode or article number” field.

Barcode scanner with the camera

On a phone and tablet there is a button with a camera next to the search field — both in the header and in the search results (“Scan”):

1. Press it and allow the browser to access the camera.
2. Point the frame at the barcode — the first recognised code goes into the field and the search starts by itself.
3. If the camera is unavailable or access is denied, press “Take a photo”: the code will be found in the picture.

The camera sometimes reads a barcode with an error — then the code will not be found. Compare the digits with the packaging and correct the code in the field under the “not found” message, or scan it again with the “Scan” button next to the field.

EAN and UPC, Code 128 from price tags, DataMatrix labelling codes (the GTIN barcode is taken from it) and a QR code, if it holds the product code itself rather than a link, are recognised. Recognition runs in the browser: in Chrome on Android with built-in tools, in Safari and Firefox with a module that the site loads itself.

Products sold by weight

Products sold by weight carry a shop scale sticker with a 20–29 barcode: it holds the product number and the weight or price. Such a code changes from package to package, so as a whole it usually will not be found in the catalogue. Then the search itself extracts the product number from it and shows this number among the article numbers of all sellers — as a list, because different shops can have the same numbers.

Frequently asked questions