Pharmacy Price Comparison

Compare pharmacy product prices across 12 European online pharmacies in 6 countries (BE, NL, DE, AT, SE, DK) with a single API call.

How to compare pharmacy prices across Europe

This actor searches multiple online pharmacies simultaneously and groups identical products by EAN barcode. You get a side-by-side price comparison showing which pharmacy offers the lowest price for any medicine, supplement, or health product.

Instead of manually visiting each pharmacy website, this actor does all the work: it runs 12 specialized pharmacy scrapers in parallel, collects their results, matches products by EAN code (or by fuzzy name matching as fallback), and outputs a unified comparison dataset.

Why use this actor?

• Save hours of manual comparison — one search query, 12 pharmacies checked automatically
• Find real savings — price differences of 20-50% are common for identical products across pharmacies
• Cross-border arbitrage — compare prices in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark
• No login or cookies required — all data comes from publicly available product listings
• Automated monitoring — schedule runs to track price changes over time

Supported pharmacies

Pharmacy	Country	Currency
Farmaline	Belgium	EUR
Multipharma	Belgium	EUR
Kruidvat	Belgium / Netherlands	EUR
Apotheek	Belgium / Netherlands	EUR
Viata	Belgium	EUR
APONEO	Germany	EUR
Shop Apotheke	Germany / Austria	EUR
dm	Germany	EUR
Apoteket	Sweden	SEK
Apotea	Sweden	SEK
Apotekshjärtat	Sweden	SEK
Matas	Denmark	DKK

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
searchQuery	String	No	Product to search for (default: "paracetamol")
countries	Array	No	Country codes to include: BE, NL, DE, AT, SE, DK (default: all)
maxItemsPerPharmacy	Integer	No	Max products per pharmacy (default: 10)
timeoutPerPharmacySecs	Integer	No	Timeout per scraper in seconds (default: 120)
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	Proxy settings passed to underlying scrapers

Output

Each result is a product comparison showing the price at every pharmacy where it was found:

Field	Type	Example
productName	String	"Paracetamol 500mg 20 tablets"
ean	String	"5412345678901"
lowestPrice	Number	2.99
highestPrice	Number	4.49
priceDifference	String	"50.2%"
pharmacyCount	Number	4
prices	Array	Price at each pharmacy (see below)
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp

Each entry in the prices array contains:

Field	Type	Description
pharmacy	String	Pharmacy name
country	String	Country code (BE, NL, DE, etc.)
price	Number	Current selling price
currency	String	Currency code (EUR, SEK, DKK)
url	String	Direct link to the product page
inStock	Boolean	Whether the product is available
originalPrice	Number	Price before discount (if applicable)

The last item in the dataset is a __SUMMARY__ record with run metadata: pharmaciesQueried, pharmaciesFailed, totalComparisons, and multiPharmacyMatches.

Example output

{
    "productName": "Paracetamol EG 500mg 20 Tabletten",
    "ean": "5420036901234",
    "prices": [
        {
            "pharmacy": "Multipharma",
            "country": "BE",
            "price": 2.49,
            "currency": "EUR",
            "url": "https://www.multipharma.be/...",
            "inStock": true
        },
        {
            "pharmacy": "Farmaline",
            "country": "BE",
            "price": 2.99,
            "currency": "EUR",
            "url": "https://www.farmaline.be/...",
            "inStock": true
        },
        {
            "pharmacy": "Kruidvat BE",
            "country": "BE",
            "price": 3.49,
            "currency": "EUR",
            "url": "https://www.kruidvat.be/...",
            "inStock": true
        }
    ],
    "lowestPrice": 2.49,
    "highestPrice": 3.49,
    "priceDifference": "40.2%",
    "pharmacyCount": 3,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-07T10:30:00.000Z"
}

How product matching works

Products are matched across pharmacies using two methods:

1. EAN barcode match (primary) — When pharmacies provide EAN/GTIN barcodes, products with the same EAN are grouped together. This is the most reliable method and guarantees exact product matches.

2. Fuzzy name matching (fallback) — When no EAN is available, the actor uses word-overlap similarity to group products with similar names. A Jaccard similarity threshold of 55% is used to avoid false matches.

Results are sorted with multi-pharmacy matches first (most valuable comparisons), then by pharmacy count descending.

How it works technically

This is a meta-actor — it does not scrape pharmacy websites directly. Instead, it orchestrates 12 specialized pharmacy scrapers that are each optimized for their target site. The workflow:

1. Receives your search query and country filters
2. Starts the relevant pharmacy scrapers in parallel via the Apify API
3. Waits for all scrapers to finish (with configurable timeout)
4. Collects and normalizes results from each scraper's dataset
5. Groups identical products by EAN barcode
6. Applies fuzzy name matching for products without EAN codes
7. Calculates price comparisons and outputs unified results

If any pharmacy scraper fails or times out, the actor continues with results from the remaining pharmacies.

Cost estimate

This actor runs multiple sub-actors, so costs depend on how many pharmacies are queried:

• All 12 pharmacies, 10 items each — approximately 0.5-1.0 compute units per run
• Single country (e.g., BE only) — approximately 0.1-0.3 compute units per run

The main cost driver is the number of pharmacies queried and the maxItemsPerPharmacy setting. Keep maxItemsPerPharmacy at 10-20 for cost-effective comparison runs.

Tips for best results

• Use generic product names like "paracetamol", "ibuprofen 400mg", or "vitamine D" for the broadest matches
• Filter by country if you only care about local prices — this saves compute and speeds up results
• Set maxItemsPerPharmacy to 5-10 for quick price checks, or 20-50 for comprehensive comparisons
• Schedule weekly runs to monitor price changes over time
• The priceDifference field makes it easy to spot products with the biggest savings potential

Limitations

• Products can only be matched across pharmacies when they share an EAN barcode or have very similar names
• Currency conversion is not performed — EUR, SEK, and DKK prices are shown as-is
• Some pharmacies may not return results for certain search terms due to language differences
• Prescription-only medicines may not be available on all pharmacy websites
• The actor's cost scales with the number of pharmacies queried (each is a separate Apify run)
• If an underlying pharmacy scraper is temporarily broken, that pharmacy will be marked as failed and results from other pharmacies are still returned