Funding

Open Food Facts

The Open Food Facts organization has been the host of the Open Prices project since its inception.

In taking this role, the non-profit has dedicated the following resources to the project:

• Access to bare-metal servers to host part of the infrastructure
• Coverage of costs of cloud-based solutions when required (mostly AI)
• Tools for community animation
• Stickers and other real life goodies
• Slots during Open Food Facts related events
• Human resources to maintain the infrastructure and contribute to the project (in technical and non-technical ways)

To do so, the organization used its own funds, as well as funds directed to the Open Prices project, such as the one below.

NLnet

In 2025-2026 the Open Prices project received funding from NLnet, via the NGI Zero Commons Fund.

NLnet is a non-profit organization that supports open source projects and initiatives that contribute to a more open and secure internet. The NGI Zero Commons Fund is a funding program that supports projects that contribute to the development of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and promote digital sovereignty.

Thanks to this funding, we worked on 3 main areas:

• Better machine learning tools to extract prices and barcodes from store shelf images (see AI)
• Moderation tools (see Moderation & Historisation)
• Gamification (see Gamification)

More info:

• NLnet project page
• Github board to track progress
• Blog post mentioning the funding

Volunteer contributions

While not strictly funding, volunteer contributions must be acknowledged, as the project couldn't exist without them.

Rough estimates indicate that every 50 prices, one volunteer-hour was spent either adding them or building the infrastructure to do so efficiently. With more than a quarter million prices, that's the equivalent of a team of 3 to 4 working full-time on the project for a year.