Israel's price transparency law — what it requires and why it matters

Until 2015 there was no simple way to know what the same product cost at the branch across the street. The Law for Promotion of Competition in the Food and Pharma Sectors, 5774-2014, changed that: its Chapter C requires large chains to publish their prices in an open, machine-readable form.

The duty applies to a "large retailer" — a chain with three or more branches whose annual turnover exceeds the amount set in the law (on the order of ILS 290 million, index-linked), and to online stores above the same threshold. For the transparency chapter the average sales floor must also exceed 120 m².

What exactly must be published: three kinds of file — the branch list, the product-and-price list, and the promotions list including each promotion's conditions and end date. The files must be in XML, meaning readable by a machine and not only by a human eye.

How often? Full files every trading day when the branch opens, and a price change at the register must be published within one hour. That is why price comparison can be current rather than historical.

The most important point for a shopper: the law states explicitly that any person may access the data and use it freely and at no charge, for private or commercial purposes. The data belongs to the public, not to the chains. Enforcement sits with the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority, which also publishes the list of links to the chains' sites.

QuickCheck is built exactly on that basis: we read those same official files and present them so they can be compared by barcode, by branch and by distance from you. We do not set prices — the source is always the chain's own official publication.