About HOBOS Price Explorer
How It Works
HOBOS Price Explorer aggregates price data from real travel receipts. Travelers using the HOBOS mobile app photograph their receipts during trips. Our AI (powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash) extracts every line item — from the price of a bowl of ramen to a taxi fare — with store names, dates, and currencies.
This data is then anonymized, aggregated, and made available here so anyone planning a trip can see what things actually cost in their destination.
Methodology
Our price data follows strict quality standards:
- AI confidence threshold: Only receipts parsed with 70%+ confidence are included. User-verified corrections are always included.
- Minimum sample size: Category and store averages require at least 3 data points from 2+ distinct travelers before being displayed.
- Outlier removal: Prices more than 3 standard deviations from the mean are excluded to prevent data skew.
- Statistical measures: We show min, median, max, 25th and 75th percentiles — not just averages — so you get a realistic range.
- Recency: Data is refreshed every 6 hours. More recent receipts carry higher weight in aggregations.
Data Quality Indicators
Reliable data
100+ receipts from multiple travelers. High statistical confidence.
Growing data
20–99 receipts. Good directional data, ranges may be wider.
Early data
Under 20 receipts. Treat as preliminary — more data will improve accuracy.
Privacy
Your privacy is fundamental to how we operate:
- Consent required: Only data from users who explicitly agreed to anonymous data sharing is included.
- No personal information: User IDs, email addresses, payment details, and card numbers are never included in aggregated data.
- No individual transactions: We show statistical summaries (min/median/max) — never individual receipt amounts.
- Store anonymity threshold: Store names are only shown when 3+ distinct travelers have provided data for that store.
- No precise locations: Only city-level geography is used. GPS coordinates from individual receipts are not exposed.
- Date granularity: Time data is aggregated to month level. No specific transaction dates are exposed.
How We Compare to Other Cost-of-Living Sites
| Feature | HOBOS | Others |
|---|---|---|
| Data source | Real receipts (AI parsed) | Self-reported surveys |
| Price granularity | Individual items | Category averages only |
| Store-level data | Yes (with privacy threshold) | No |
| Price trends | Monthly trends | Static snapshots |
| Multi-currency | Local + USD + KRW | Local only |
Contribute your travel prices
Download HOBOS, snap your receipts, and help travelers around the world make smarter spending decisions.
All data is anonymized and aggregated. Your personal information is never shared.