No magic. Just receipts.
10,557 hotels in 54 cities, 538 booking sites, one question: who is cheapest for the exact same stay. Here is what every number on this site means and where it comes from.
Where the prices come from
The prices are collected, not licensed: a scraper asks two metasearch sources — HotelsCombined (KAYAK) and Google Hotels — for a city and dates, and records every provider’s total exactly as the source printed it: the seller’s name, the amount, the currency, the moment it was seen. Nothing is estimated and nothing is averaged before it is stored.
- Collection runs on a schedule, city by city, at several booking horizons — a stay is checked again as its check-in approaches. Every price on the site says when it was seen; “seen 2 days ago” means exactly that.
- The stay shape collected is two adults, one room, two nights. Ask for something else and the site says so and shows the nearest priced stay rather than inventing a number.
- Sources do not report the room type. Two totals for the same hotel and dates are the same “stay”, not necessarily the same bed — see “Is it comparable?” below.
The two savings, never added up
A card can carry two figures that look alike and answer different questions. “−30% vs usual” is the offer against its OWN history: the median of what the same seller asked for the same hotel, dates, guests and currency on the previous scrape days — at least two of them, within the last 30 days. It is not a seller’s strikethrough price; the sources do not report those.
“12% below other sites” is the offer against the MEDIAN provider quoting the same stay on the same scrape day. It needs at least two providers; a hotel quoted by one has no gap, and the page says nothing rather than zero.
- They are never combined into one number: one is time, the other is competition, and a sum of the two would mean nothing.
- Ranking by drop or by gap uses the percentage, which needs no currency; amounts in USD appear where the day has an exchange rate and are left blank where it does not.
Is it comparable?
Offers are set against each other only on the same dates, the same guests, the same currency and the same scrape day. Within a day the last poll of each provider counts, so a site polled six times does not weigh six times.
What cannot be aligned is the room. A very large gap between two sites — 60% and more — is more often a dorm bed next to a suite than a bargain, which is why the site keeps saying so next to the numbers instead of celebrating them.
The deal meter
The meter places a hotel’s nightly price among the hotels of its city: every hotel contributes one price — the cheapest stay it currently has, per night, in USD — so a hotel quoted by twenty sites weighs no more than one quoted by two. “Cheaper than 86% of the city” is literally that share of hotels.
The same measure is taken among hotels of the same kind (apartments against apartments) and the same star class when the set is five hotels or more. “Usually wins here” counts, for this hotel, how many of its priced stays each site was the cheapest on.
Price trend and “still quoting”
The price trend is about one check-in date at a time: every hotel of the city is compared with itself for those dates across the days it was watched, and the ratios are averaged — the mix of hotels cannot move the line. It is the city’s trend, not one hotel’s, and it grows one point per scrape day.
“Providers still quoting” counts, for one stay, how many sites priced it on each scrape day. It is a proxy for availability, not availability: a site that stops quoting has most often sold its allotment, but may just have been left out of the source’s answer that day. The card appears after three days and calls a stay “getting scarce” only when the price rose as well.
Blank dates
A date without a price was not checked, not sold out. The calendars are sparse by construction: collection picks check-in dates ahead of time and revisits them; a night nobody has asked for yet is simply blank.
Links, clicks and what we keep
Nothing is booked here. A “go to seller” link opens the seller’s own page for those dates; where the source gave a direct link it goes through a counting redirect, so the site knows which offers get followed — no account, no personal data. Where no direct link exists, the link leads to the source’s comparison page and says so.
Cookies remember your theme, your last dates and your language. Saved hotels and the comparison shelf live in your browser only. A price alert stores the e-mail you typed for that alert and nothing else.
Stuff people ask.
Answers written from today’s numbers, not a help page from 2019.
How does StayScope get its prices?
StayScope reads the public price pages of 538 booking sites for 10,557 hotels in 54 cities and keeps each reading as an observation (918,500 to date). History is append-only: an old price stays what it was, which is what makes a drop a fact rather than an estimate.
Are the prices really comparable?
The same hotel, the same check-in and check-out, the same number of guests and rooms, read on the same day — that much StayScope holds constant. The room type is what the sites do not report, so a very wide gap can be two room categories rather than two prices; past 60% the comparison is shown but not counted as a fight.
What is the difference between a drop and a gap?
Two comparisons, two directions. Against time: is this site cheaper than it was (30-day baseline, at least 2 earlier days)? Against the market: is it cheaper than the median site today? StayScope shows both and sums neither.
How much does the gap between sites amount to?
On 17 September 2026, over 11,679 stays priced by two or more sites, the median gap between the dearest and the cheapest quote was 19%; the top tenth of stays had a gap of 36% or more.
Do I need an account?
Nothing beyond what you type into a price alert — the stay, the price you are waiting for and where to send the notice. Saved hotels and comparisons stay in your browser; there is no account to create.
When were these prices last checked?
The figures on this page come from the collection run of 17 September 2026; the most recent check of any hotel was on 17 September 2026. A price is what the site quoted at that moment, and it can move before you get there — the seller's page has the final say.
Where do I actually book?
StayScope does not sell rooms. Every price links to the site that quoted it — a booking site or the hotel's own — and the booking happens there, at that site's terms.
Figures as of 17 Sep 2026.