The Swedish price comparison market is currently in turmoil. While Prisjakt is preparing for a stock market listing with a valuation of 675 million Swedish krona, several major e-commerce retailers have chosen to leave the platform. Following the departure of computer giant Inet, among others, along with other e-commerce companies, in protest against increased click costs, a gap has opened up in the market.
Recently, Ehandel.se reported on the new price comparison sites emerging to challenge the established players, while tech media outlet Sweclockers launched its own challenger, Prisgeek. Now, representatives from three of the new challengers share their views on retailers' dissatisfaction, business models, and how the rapid development of AI is fundamentally redrawing the playing field.
The three challengers are attacking the market from three completely different angles. Edin Mehinovic is Commercial Director and founder of Geeks AB, the media company behind Sweclockers, FZ and the new service Prisgeek. Emil Henriksson is CEO and founder of e-commerce company Sweden Buyersclub, which has launched the challenger Dubbelkolla. The third player is Fredrik Laason, co-founder of the upstart Fyndvi.
Click Prices vs. Commission on Purchase
The core of the conflict between e-commerce retailers and traditional price comparison sites revolves around the business model where stores pay per click (CPC), regardless of whether the visitor completes a purchase or not. Both Dubbelkolla and Fyndvi have chosen to eliminate click fees altogether, opting instead to charge only when an order is actually generated (CPA).
Fredrik Laason at Fyndvi explains that connected retailers only pay a commission on verified purchases through existing affiliate networks. Emil Henriksson at Dubbelkolla has also chosen a pure commission model on completed purchases, where the platform offers a combination of direct integrations and established networks depending on what suits the individual e-commerce retailer best.
At Prisgeek, Edin Mehinovic has a more nuanced view of revenue models. He believes that the click itself is not the fundamental problem, but the incentives that the model creates between the platform and retailers:
I therefore have great understanding for retailers who have invested in strong brands, competitive prices and good customer experiences. In a traditional CPC model, this results in very high traffic costs. It's almost like a success fee. The better you are at attracting customers, the more you risk having to pay to the intermediary.
At the same time, Edin Mehinovic believes that a pure commission model (CPO) is also not a problem-free solution for all categories, especially in home electronics and computer components:
At the same time, CPO is not a universal solution as it requires reliable tracking and transparency in completed purchases, and commissions can also create incorrect incentives. Especially in a technical audience that blocks all forms of tracking.
Prisgeek therefore uses a mixed model that is allowed to evolve in dialogue with the market. According to Edin Mehinovic, the editorial principles are more important than the exact billing form, where the basic rule is that retailers' willingness to pay should never determine who appears in the organic price comparison.
AI Changes the Development Economy
The fact that several new price comparison services are launching almost simultaneously is no coincidence. Previously, significant development resources were required to build systems that can handle product matching, categorization and price updates from thousands of stores. Both Prisgeek and Fyndvi testify to how modern AI has lowered the barriers to building complex infrastructure.
Fredrik Laason says that almost all the code behind Fyndvi has been written using the AI tools Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, while language models (LLM) handle the ongoing work of matching and categorizing products in the database.
At Geeks AB, AI has also been crucial for speed. Edin Mehinovic reveals that the entire Prisgeek has so far been built by a single person with the support of AI tools. The actual specification was already in place in their own forum on Sweclockers, where the thread "Prisjakt is completely ruined?!” has been active since 2019 and collected over a thousand posts from engaged users, says Edin Mehinovic:
We just needed to listen to what they have been saying for seven years, and it's fantastic that AI now gives us the opportunity to translate this feedback into our own service.
At Dubbelkolla, Emil Henriksson and his team have chosen to build a completely new platform from scratch, dimensioned to handle up to 100 million price updates per day solely via e-commerce retailers' product feeds. According to Emil Henriksson, the architecture is designed from the start for a future where consumers' own AI assistants will handle an increasing share of product searches and price comparisons.
Burned Retailers and the Road Ahead
The widespread dissatisfaction with the rising costs in the market has meant that the new players have been met with open doors at many online stores. Emil Henriksson states that the reception for Dubbelkolla has exceeded expectations and that e-commerce retailers have chosen to join immediately after launch.
Edin Mehinovic also describes a positive dialogue with Swedish hardware retailers, including Inet's CEO Erik Wickman. At the same time, he notes that trust in the industry has been damaged at many stores:
I have also come across several players who are burned by price comparison services and the dialogue with these begins negatively until they realize that we really want to listen to what they have to say.
The question is whether the new challengers can seriously disrupt the dominance of the established giants and whether the classic click model is playing out its role. Emil Henriksson believes that everything ultimately depends on where consumers start their purchase journey:
My answer is unfortunately no to that question, provided that the established giants get to keep their organic traffic from Google.
Edin Mehinovic, however, believes that the market is facing a deeper shift in consumer behavior. As technology to collect and compare prices becomes available to everyone, platforms must offer added value beyond just raw data, he concludes:
When everyone can build a price comparison service, it will no longer be the technology that differentiates us, but the knowledge we fill it with. I believe that the winners of the future will be those who help people make better purchasing decisions and deserve their trust: More knowledge. Better purchases. Less hunting.