How Edenfinder began: the story of a hotel price comparison site that started as a game

Here is something you rarely read on a company page: Edenfinder was not born in a meeting. It started as a hobby, for me and my friends.

Over the last fifteen years I have travelled a lot, more than I could really afford on paper. I have slept in hundreds of different hotels: hostels with no windows, small family run places where they hand you a coffee in the morning, and every so often somewhere I had saved up for months to reach. All that wandering left me with one thing stuck in my head, almost a tic.

The same room, different prices

It was always the same story. Same room, same hotel, same dates, yet the price changed depending on the site you looked at. Sometimes by a few euros, sometimes by a lot. Before every trip my friends and I would sit there with four tabs open, comparing hotel prices by hand: one reading a big platform, another the hotel's own site, a third trying some portal nobody had heard of. It felt like a game, but it was wasted time, and we often missed the good deal anyway.

At some point I got tired of doing it manually. So, more out of curiosity than anything, I built a small tool that would do the comparison for us: it checked all the sites at once and told us where the same room cost less. Nothing ambitious. It just helped us leave having spent a little less.

From a toy to a real comparison engine

It worked better than I expected. We started using it for every trip, and the line that kept coming up was always the same: this year we can fit in one more weekend. Because that, in the end, is what saving on the room gives back to you. Not a smaller number, but another trip.

After recommending it to friends of friends, I realised it could help anyone booking a hotel online. So I cleaned it up, gave it a name and opened it to everyone. But the idea stayed the same as day one: the same room, at the lowest price, without losing your afternoon over it.

What Edenfinder is today

Today Edenfinder is a hotel price comparison covering more than three million properties worldwide. You search a destination, pick your dates, and live rates stream in from the same engines that power the big international comparators. When the best rate is ours, you can complete the booking right on edenfinder.com, with secure payment handled by Nuitee and instant confirmation by email, voucher included. And when another site is cheaper, we show it anyway, with a direct link to book there.

I am stubborn about that point, because it is the reason the project exists: a comparator that hides the inconvenient offers is not a comparator, it is a shop window. The total you see before paying is what you pay, the cancellation terms are written before you book, not after, and your card details never touch our servers.

The filters I wished I had

Every feature on the site comes from a trip that went sideways or an evening spent comparing tabs. You can filter by free cancellation when plans are shaky, by breakfast included, by sea-view rooms priced at the actual sea-view rate, by stars, guest score, property type or hotel chain. They are the filters I wanted back when I was the one booking, and we keep adding more as people ask for them.

Edenpoints and the 1% we donate

Then there is the part of the project I care about most. With an account, every stay booked on Edenfinder gives you 1% back in Edenpoints, spendable like money on your next booking. And for every point you earn, we donate the same value to registered non-profits working on children's education and humanitarian aid. It is not marketing dressed up as charity: it is how we decided to make every booking count twice, once for you and once for someone else.

The questions I get asked most

Does Edenfinder cost anything to use? No: the comparison is free and adds nothing to the price. We earn a small share of the selling price only when you book, and I wrote exactly how in another article of this journal.

Is booking on Edenfinder safe? Payment is processed by Nuitee Travel Limited, which collects it as merchant of record and issues the invoice; the accommodation contract is always between you and the property, and you can manage or cancel your booking yourself from your account.

Why is it sometimes cheaper here than elsewhere? Because on some properties we give up part of our own margin to offer our customers a lower welcome rate. The discount is real, and we say so right where it is applied.

If you happen to leave having spent less than expected and find yourself with an extra day somewhere, then Edenfinder is doing exactly what it was made for.