Where we get data
Free public databases. We don't scrape grocery sites or buy private company lists.
Open Food Facts
Products. Cached about 7 days.
That's the barcode catalog. Name, brand, the brand owner when USDA/GDSN listed one, manufacturers, distributors, and a photo if they have one.
Open Food Facts (ODbL)
Wikidata
Brands and companies. Cached about 14 days.
We search for the brand or company and pull owner, parent, headquarters, and IDs when they're filled in. Coverage is uneven.
Wikidata (CC0)
GLEIF
Legal entities. Cached about 30 days.
Official Legal Entity Identifier records. Legal name, country, and parent companies when they have them.
GLEIF (CC0)
GS1 company prefix
Barcode licensee. Cached about 30 days.
Every UPC/GTIN embeds a company prefix. We look that prefix up in Wikidata to find who licensed the barcode — usually the company named on the package. The official Verified by GS1 API is members-only, so this is the public path.
OpenCorporates
Corporate control tree. Cached about 14 days. Optional API token.
Once we have a company name, we can search official company registers and follow controlling-parent records. This stays off until you add a token in config.ini. Free tokens are available for open-data projects.
What's missing
- Not every product is in Open Food Facts.
- Not every company has an LEI.
- Wikidata is hit or miss depending on the brand, and GS1 prefix coverage there is incomplete.
- Store brands often list a manufacturer but not who owns the brand.
- OpenCorporates needs an API token before it can walk parent companies.
- We won't call a company independent unless the records actually say that.
If something looks wrong, you can send a correction from the product page. See what we track.