idealo compares offers from online shops in six European countries and lists the cheapest first. To follow a price, idealo itself offers Price Alerts and a price history. For software, it runs an MCP server for AI assistants and gives selected publishers an API. Its terms do not permit scraping without idealo's permission. A proxy does not change any of this.
How idealo ranks offers
idealo is not a shop. Retailers send it their offers, idealo lists them for each product, and you buy from the retailer. idealo says it "may receive a commission" when it sends you to a retailer. Its terms describe the results as an overview of shops "cooperating with idealo on a remuneration basis", with "no claims of displaying a complete overview".
Its ranking page sets out the order of the offers for one product:
| case | what idealo says |
|---|---|
| default | "We always display the cheapest price first." By default this is the unit price, without delivery and other costs. |
| total price | The sort order "Total price" shows the cheapest price including delivery and any other costs. |
| missing details | Offers without delivery charges or a payment method "are generally displayed further down the list". |
| marketplaces | Where a marketplace lists many offers, idealo may show only its best one. |
| equal prices | A merchant that pays higher remuneration ranks higher. Offers on a limited budget rank lower, and then longer-standing merchants rank higher. |
Prices come from the retailers. idealo says they are "updated regularly", and how often "depends on the individual retailer". It says it does not set the prices, and it shows all users the lowest price available.
Price Alerts and the price history
For a shopper who wants to follow a price, idealo's own tools do it. Its app listing, updated on 29 September 2026, says you can "Check the price history and set Price Alerts that let you know when your favourite products hit the price you want to pay". A Price Alert sends a message "when the price for your selected product drops or a special discount becomes available". Email alerts come "when a product reaches your target price".
The terms say the Price Alert has conditions of its own, "clearly posted in the appropriate places". On the website, the percentage savings compare a price with "the average price over the last 90 days". The app listing counts 183 million offers from 30,000 online shops in the UK.
What idealo's terms say
idealo's terms, updated in February 2023, treat its data and search results as protected material. Reproduction and other uses "are only permitted with the explicit written permission of idealo, unless a statutory limit applies". Each unauthorised encroachment "represents a violation of these Terms and Conditions and will be prosecuted". They go on: "the automated reading of databases and websites (e.g. via scraping) and the integration of the contents of the websites in a frame without idealo's permission is not permitted".
Use is limited to "the individual comparison of offers from Online Shops for his/her own private needs". idealo may also exclude a customer who uses its services in a way that may damage their functionality.
What robots.txt says
idealo's robots.txt keeps every crawler it does not name out of addresses such as /price-chart/, /priceChartApi/, /prices/, /offerpage/ and /shop-data/. It shuts six named crawlers out of the whole site, among them DataForSeoBot and BLEXBot. Five more, among them Applebot-Extended, may read only the company, legal and magazine pages. The robots.txt standard, RFC 9309, says its rules "are not a form of access authorization", so the terms still decide.
idealo's own routes for software
idealo runs an MCP server, documented in a guide on GitHub under its own name. In the guide's words, it lets an AI assistant "search products, compare prices across hundreds of shops, and analyse 30-day price history across 6 European marketplaces". The Trial tier, the default, is self-serve, with three requests a second, bursts of six and 500 calls a day per user.
| route | who can use it | what it gives |
|---|---|---|
| Price Alerts and price history | anyone: Price Alerts on the site and in the app, the price history in the app | a message when a price drops or reaches your target. |
| MCP server, Trial tier | anyone, through a self-serve sign-in | 500 calls a day, up to 10 offers per product and a 30-day price history. |
| MCP server, Partner tier | on request, by email to idealo | higher limits and fuller data. |
| idealo Private Network | selected premium publishers | "access to our API", with more advertising options. |
Two more limits apply to the MCP server. The guide says a "Compliance blocklist removes Amazon, eBay, and Otto offers from all tiers". And an unknown country code falls back to Germany.
The idealo Private Network is idealo's partner platform for "exclusive premium publishers", launched in 2020. idealo calls it "ideal for larger tech-savvy publishers who already have experience with affiliate marketing". Shops reach idealo the other way: they register and send their offers.
The scrapers and the guides
A search of GitHub for "idealo scraper" lists 23 projects. The most starred, with 9 stars, scrapes "the Idealo backend" and serves the data through an API of its own. Another emails you once a price drops under a limit, which idealo's Price Alert already does. A third advertises "Proxy support". Two pages from scraping companies sell idealo data collection and price tracking. None of them mentions idealo's terms.
Where a proxy fits
For idealo, a proxy does not fit. The terms rule out automated reading without idealo's permission, whatever address it comes from. idealo's own tools cover the common needs: Price Alerts for shoppers, the MCP server for AI assistants and an API for selected publishers.
For other work where a proxy is allowed, what a residential proxy is explains the type. How to check if a proxy is working shows how to test one. Residential traffic without city targeting starts at $0.44/GB, and every plan is on our pricing page.
The limits of this page
We read idealo's terms, robots.txt, its company, ranking and affiliate pages, its app listing and its MCP guide from our server in St. Louis on 4 October 2026. A first read of the terms got HTTP 403, and a second read worked. We did not sign in, set a Price Alert or connect the MCP server, and we loaded no product page. This page is due for a check by 4 January 2027.
Sources
Every page below was read on 4 October 2026, from our server in St. Louis.
- idealo, General Terms and Conditions, and its robots.txt.
- idealo, How idealo works and Our ranking parameters and recommender systems.
- idealo, Affiliate Marketing Programme.
- The idealo app on Google Play, updated 29 September 2026.
- idealo, MCP Server Guide on GitHub.
- IETF, RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol.
- GitHub's repository search for "idealo scraper" (not linked).
