How DAAM works: verified prices for Pakistan

The problem DAAM solves

In Pakistan, prices are scattered across shops, brand stores, marketplaces, delivery apps, supplier rate lists and government notifications. The same phone, lawn suit or bag of cement can cost noticeably different amounts depending on where you ask — and most people only find out after paying. DAAM (daam, دام, is Urdu for price) collects that evidence, keeps its history and answers three questions: what does this cost now, what has it cost before, and is the price I was quoted fair?

One rule: every price has evidence

Every price DAAM shows traces back to a stored observation with the source URL it was read from, the time it was observed and a short evidence snippet. The AI in DAAM reads pages and photos, matches products and explains results — it never invents a price. When there isn’t enough recent, verified evidence, DAAM says so plainly and asks the one question that would help (a storage size, a city, a cement brand).

How prices are collected

• Public listings. DaamBot reads publicly listed prices from Pakistani sellers’ websites and official sources. It identifies itself, respects robots.txt, limits how often it visits each site and never logs in or bypasses protections. Sellers can request corrections or opt out on the DaamBot page.
• On a schedule, and on demand. Listings are re-checked on a schedule that adapts to how often a price changes — electronics more often than restaurant menus — and can be re-checked when someone asks.
• Checked before it counts. A new price passes several checks — that it appears in the page’s own text, that it is plausible for the category, that it didn’t jump suspiciously — before it can appear in an answer. Unusual jumps go to review instead of straight to users.

Comparing like with like

A “cheaper price” only helps if it is the same thing. DAAM keeps the details that change a price as part of a product’s identity: storage, RAM and PTA status for phones; official vs shop warranty; new vs used; unstitched vs stitched and the brand for clothing (a replica is never compared with the original); grade, unit and city for construction materials; and portion, branch and delivery app vs dine-in for restaurants. Installment prices are never mixed with cash prices.

What an answer shows

• Market now — the current range of verified prices and the median (middle) price.
• Cheapest verified in-stock — the lowest price from a seller who actually has it, with a link and how long ago it was checked.
• Price history — the recent trend, so you can tell a real sale from a normal price.
• Verdict and possible saving — if you give a price, whether it sits within the market range or above it, and how much less you could pay.
• Confidence — how many sellers and listings the answer rests on, and how fresh they are.

A step-by-step guide is in how to read a DAAM answer.

Receipts, quotations, price tags and menus

Send a photo and DAAM reads the items, quantities and prices, then shows them in an editable card. You fix anything it misread before it checks each line against the market — so a blurry photo never turns into a wrong verdict. It works for shop receipts, contractor and supplier quotations, shelf labels, menus and screenshots of online listings. See checking a receipt with a photo.

What DAAM covers

Electronics (phones, laptops, tablets, TVs, ACs, fridges, washing machines, consoles and accessories), clothing and textiles, restaurant menus, and construction materials — cement, sariya, bricks, sand, crush, blocks, tiles and paint. It understands questions about 20 cities, including Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Peshawar, Quetta and Hyderabad, and checks construction and restaurant prices city by city.

Free to use, with alerts when you sign in

You can ask without an account, within a daily limit of checks. Signing in with Google raises the limit and lets you set a price-drop alert from any answer: DAAM tells you when a verified, in-stock offer for that product gets cheaper. Businesses can use a read-only price API for benchmarking.

Privacy

Photos are resized in your browser before upload, which strips location data, and are cleaned again on the server. They are used only to read prices and are deleted after 30 days. Names, phone numbers, CNIC and card numbers are redacted from anything DAAM keeps. Details are on the privacy page.

The price guides

DAAM’s price guides are written by Hamza (hamza@moodbook.uk). They explain how prices work — what changes a price, where to buy and what to check before paying — and link to a live DAAM check instead of quoting numbers that go out of date.