慳家通 Pricly — Hong Kong supermarket price comparison, with real unit prices
A 1.5 litre bottle at $18.90 and a 2 litre at $23.50 — which is cheaper? This works out the real price per litre, across supermarkets, from the Consumer Council's own data.
Package sizes exist to make comparison hard
Two brands of the same product almost never come in the same size, which means the shelf price tells you very little. Doing the division in your head, per item, for a full trolley, is not something anyone does — so the cheaper-looking package wins, and it is frequently the more expensive one per kilo.
Pricly computes the unit price properly and shows it next to the shelf price, across the retailers covered by the Consumer Council's Online Price Watch. The comparison stops being arithmetic and becomes reading.
How the Hong Kong supermarket price comparison works
Search, compare, and keep track of what you buy repeatedly.
- A real unit price. Prices are normalised to dollars per kilogram, per 100 grams, per litre, per 100 millilitres, or per item depending on the product. Crucially, when the app cannot confidently work out the size from the product name, it shows nothing rather than a guess — a wrong unit price is worse than none.
- Prices across supermarkets. The same product's price at the retailers the Consumer Council tracks, side by side, so the question becomes which shop rather than which package.
- A basket. Add what you actually buy and the app totals it, with variant selection where a product comes in several sizes. This turns the app from a lookup into a weekly shopping tool.
- A watchlist with alerts. Follow the products you care about and get a local notification when the price moves. For the handful of items a household buys constantly, this is where the savings actually come from.
- Price history. A sparkline on each product, which is how you tell a genuine discount from a price that was raised last month and then reduced.
- Barcode scanning. Scan a product in the aisle and go straight to its comparison, without typing a Chinese product name into a search box while holding a basket.
- A savings dashboard. A running view of what your choices have saved, which is the feedback that keeps the habit going.
One source, and it is a good one
The prices come from the Consumer Council's Online Price Watch open data feed. That is a deliberate constraint: it means the app does not scrape retailers, does not invent prices, and does not carry affiliate links steering you toward a particular supermarket. It also means coverage is whatever the Consumer Council publishes — not every product in every shop, and updated on their schedule rather than in real time.
Retailer codes from the upstream feed are mapped explicitly, and codes the app does not recognise are skipped rather than lumped into a wrong retailer — the sort of decision that keeps a price-comparison app honest.
Who it is for
Whoever does the household shopping and feels the difference between a $600 and a $700 week. The basket and the watchlist are designed for a repeating weekly shop rather than a one-off comparison.
It also suits anyone bulk-buying staples — rice, oil, detergent, tinned goods — where the unit price gap between package sizes is largest and least visible. And it suits people who suspect a promotion is not really a promotion, which the price history answers directly.
Data source and limits
Prices come from the Consumer Council's Online Price Watch open data. The app is unofficial and not affiliated with the Consumer Council or any retailer. Coverage and update frequency are determined by that dataset, so a product may be missing or a price may lag the shelf.
Always treat the shelf as authoritative at the point of purchase. Watchlists and baskets are stored on the device; there is no account. The app is free and ad-supported.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the prices come from? The Consumer Council's Online Price Watch open data feed. The app does not scrape retailers or generate prices of its own.
Why does some products show no unit price? Because it could not confidently determine the package size from the product name. It shows nothing rather than a guess — a wrong price per kilo is worse than none.
Can it tell me when something gets cheaper? Yes. Add it to your watchlist and a local notification fires when the price moves.
Can I scan a barcode in the shop? Yes. Scanning takes you straight to that product's comparison, which beats typing a Chinese product name one-handed in an aisle.
Is it affiliated with any supermarket? No. There are no affiliate links and no retailer relationships — it runs on public open data.