Frequently asked questions

A search engine for supermarket products from Albert Heijn, Jumbo, PLUS, Dirk and Hoogvliet. You search by product, brand or ingredient and hide the allergens you cannot eat. Every product shows its ingredient list, its allergens, the price per supermarket and the price history.

From the supermarkets themselves: what they publish on their own websites. We re-read every product every week, and each product shows when we last saw its label.

Use the site to choose, then check the label. A recipe can change before we see it, and a shop can publish something different from what is printed on the pack. The pack in your hand always decides.

No. Everything works without an account and at no cost. The allergens you choose are remembered on your own device.

No. We belong to no supermarket, and there are no adverts on the site.

Choose what you cannot eat under Filters (on a phone, the button bottom right). Every product that contains it disappears from the results. A family such as Nuts or Cereals containing gluten is chosen in one go, or unfold it and tick kind by kind.

‘Contains’ means it is in the recipe. ‘May contain traces’ means it is not, but can get into the product in the factory. By default we hide only ‘contains’; turn on ‘Also hide “may contain traces of”’ if traces are a risk for you. See also May contain traces.

For some products the shop publishes no allergen information. We hide those by default, because unknown is not the same as safe. Show them with the switch ‘Hide products without allergen data’ under Filters.

A label that only says ‘nuts’ does not say which nut is in it, so it does not say there is no hazelnut either. That is why such a product counts when you avoid one kind of nut. The same goes for gluten, fish, crustaceans and molluscs.

Choose lactose if you only cannot digest milk sugar: lactose-free dairy then stays visible. Choose milk for a cow's milk allergy: that hides everything with milk protein, lactose-free dairy included. Read more about lactose and milk.

Hoogvliet publishes no separate allergen field, and other shops sometimes leave a product without allergens. Then we read the allergens from the ingredient list itself, where the manufacturer puts them in bold or capitals. If you only want what the shop itself declares, turn on ‘Only shops that declare allergens’.

Yes. Choose one or more supermarkets under Filters; ‘All supermarkets’ resets the choice.

That the ingredient list changed in the past three months. A moved comma or full stop does not count. Sort on ‘Recipe changed recently’ to see them first. A changed recipe is the moment to read the label extra carefully.

First choose what you must avoid, tap the start button and point the camera at the barcode. The screen turns green when the product fits, red when it contains one of your allergens and grey when the shop gives no allergen information. On red you see which ingredients are the cause. Open the Scanner.

Largely. The Scanner keeps a copy of every barcode with its allergens on your phone and falls back on it when there is no connection. The result then says which date that copy is from.

Yes, in Safari. Allow the camera when asked. If scanning does not work, type in the digits under the barcode.

Dirk and Hoogvliet often publish no barcodes. Search for the product by name in the screen that appears and link the code to it. On your own phone that works at once; once three phones make the same link, it works for everyone.

Yes. On Android with the button ‘Put the Scanner on your home screen’ on the Scanner page, or from Chrome's menu. On an iPhone in Safari via Share, then ‘Add to Home Screen’.

We read them every week, so a price in the shop can be slightly different. Each product shows the price per supermarket; tap a shop to open the product on that supermarket's website.

The regular shelf price per supermarket over time, without temporary offers. With ‘Show offers’ you see when an offer ran. Point at a reading, or tap it, for the prices on that day.

Not every shop says when an offer ends. When the shop does, you see ‘until’ with the date, and the offer disappears by itself after that day.

Tell us, ideally with what the pack says. At the bottom of every product page there is a button that fills in the report for you. See Contact (in Dutch; English mail is welcome).

There are no trackers, adverts or third-party cookies on the site, and your filters stay on your own device. We count anonymously which searches are made, which products the Scanner reads and whether it shows green, red or grey, without anything that leads back to you.

No. Always discuss an allergy or a diet with your doctor or dietitian. With breathing difficulty or a swelling throat after eating: call 112. See also Anaphylaxis.