How these prices are gathered

Almost every number on this site is an observation: one price, from one provider, on one date, from a named source. It is never an average of things that were not measured. Where a figure is an estimate rather than an observation, mostly a home-country reference price with no published tariff behind it, the row says so and the estimate never leads a comparison.

Every price carries its date

A price with no date is a rumour. Local prices move, so each observation records when it was seen and how precisely that is known: a day, a month, or only a year.

Prices are then sorted into three bands:

• Fresh, seen less than 6 months ago.
• Aging, seen 6 to 18 months ago. Still shown, still usable, treated with more care.
• Stale, seen more than 18 months ago. Shown like any other price, with its date, and counted in the calculator like any other price.

The band is a reading aid, not a filter. Nothing is greyed out, hidden or dropped from a total because of its age: the date is on the row and the judgement is yours.

Nothing is ever deleted. A new observation is added next to the old one, so a price has a history you can read.

How sure is a price?

Every price carries a label saying who produced the number, because that is the thing you can judge for yourself. There are four, strongest first.

• Seller's price. The business publishes it: its own website, its own social account, its own price list or a tariff that binds it. You can open the page and check it.
• Paid in person. Somebody paid this and we hold the receipt. It proves the price was charged. It does not promise you will be charged the same, and where the figure was haggled, at a market or a tailor, it is marked negotiated.
• Reported elsewhere. Someone other than the seller reports it: a listing, a review, a quote given to us, a reader's submission. The seller did not publish it, so it can change without them.
• Estimate. Nobody published a price. We say so. An estimate never sets a headline figure and never leads an item.

The label is not a quality score. A seller's published price can be out of date and a receipt can be exact. It tells you what kind of claim the number is, so you can weigh it yourself.

A price is only a seller's price when the page it cites is demonstrably the seller's own. Where a business's own website is not recorded, its prices read as reported, even when the page may well be theirs. We would rather understate what we can prove.

Prices that rest on a single source, or that come from a different city and are shown for comparison, are marked as such next to the number.

Both currencies, and the rate

Prices are recorded in the currency the provider charges: dong in Da Nang, dong in Hoi An, dong in Hanoi, dong in Ho Chi Minh City, baht in Bangkok, forint in Budapest, and lek in Tirana. The euro figure beside it is a conversion, stored with the rate and the date it was converted at, so it can be recomputed rather than quietly rotting as the rate moves.

How providers are ranked

The order of providers on a category page is computed from the data alone, in this order:

• How often it holds the cheapest current price.
• How many of its services have a price at all.
• How recently it was checked.
• How complete its listing is: a website, a phone number, opening hours.

Paid placement

Some providers may pay to appear on this site. When they do:

• Paid placement is a fixed slot outside the ranked list. It never takes a position inside it.
• Sponsorship is not an input to the ranking. The ranking code cannot read it.
• A sponsor's own price claim is a vendor quote like anybody else's, with no privileged status.
• Sponsors are listed publicly.

A directory that tells you to stay home when staying home is cheaper is worth more than one that does not. That is the entire reason the rule is structural rather than a promise.

What is not here

This site does not give medical, dental or legal advice. It records what things cost and where. Whether a treatment is right for you is between you and a clinician.

Some categories are still thin. A category page with too few dated prices is kept out of search results until it is worth landing on, rather than published as filler.

What we promise, and what we do not

The honest version, because a price site that oversells its own certainty is worth nothing.

What we promise.

• Every figure is a real observation with a date and, where one exists, a link to the page it came from. If we cannot point at it, we say so on the row.
• When a number turns out to be wrong we withdraw it rather than quietly edit it. The old row stays in the history with the correction next to it.
• We take no commission on anything, and paid placement can never enter the ranking.
• We publish what we get wrong. The audit of 5 September 2026 withdrew 23 prices that did not survive checking, and removed ten Dutch reference prices that were quietly German.

What we do not promise.

• A price here is not a quote. It is what a provider published or charged on a date. What you are quoted depends on your case, your teeth, your prescription, your fabric.
• Most items rest on one observation. Da Nang is not a market with published tariffs on every door. One dated price from one named shop is often all that exists, and it is shown for what it is, not dressed up as a market average.
• Some prices are old. Every price carries the date it was seen, and none is hidden, greyed out or dropped for its age. We would rather show you a dated old price than a fresh guess, and let you decide what it is worth.
• Public hospital prices are not the same product as an international clinic. Both are real, both are shown, and the page says which is which.
• We are not a booking site, take no fee, and have no opinion about whether you should travel.

Tell us when we are wrong

Every item, provider and report page carries a "this is wrong" form. It asks what is wrong, what the right figure is, and where you saw it. An email address is optional; without one the report is anonymous. Nothing else is stored, and there is no account, cookie or tracker attached to it.

Reports are read by a person, checked against the source, and either applied or rejected with a reason. Being told we are wrong, with evidence, is the most useful thing anyone can send us.