popuste.rs: Building a Modern Price Comparison Platform for Serbia

popuste.rs is a full-stack price comparison platform designed for the Serbian market. The goal is simple: help people find the best deals across retailers without spending time hopping between apps, flyers, and fragmented promo pages. At its core, the platform aggregates product price lists and promotions from multiple sources and normalizes them into a single, searchable catalog. Users can compare prices across retailers, review price history over time, track discounts, and set up alerts for price drops. The experience is built to be practical first: fast search, clear product pages, and pricing charts that answer “is this actually a good deal?” rather than just showing a number. ## What the platform does popuste.rs combines several consumer-focused features into one coherent workflow: - **Product catalog** with categories, brands, and images - **Price comparison** across multiple retailers and stores - **Price history** charts to see trends and detect “fake discounts” - **Discount offers** and promotions in one place - **Promo code aggregation** for participating retailers - **Price alerts** for drops on specific products - **Favorites and recently viewed** to keep shopping decisions lightweight Because Serbia is multilingual in practice (and many residents are expats), the UI supports **Serbian Latin**, **Serbian Cyrillic**, **English**, and **Russian**, with consistent navigation and terminology across the app. ## How it’s built The system is structured as a modular, production-oriented stack: - **Backend:** Django + Django REST Framework, PostgreSQL, Redis, Celery - **Frontend:** React + Vite with Tailwind CSS and modern UI components - **Infrastructure:** Docker Compose, Nginx, and optional HTTPS via Certbot The backend is split into focused Django apps (accounts, catalog, pricing, retailers, promo codes, news, geo, etc.), which keeps the codebase maintainable as features expand. Background jobs (Celery) handle imports, refresh cycles, and time-based tasks. Caching and rate limiting are applied to keep the service stable under load. Admin tooling matters for a data platform, so popuste.rs includes multiple admin interfaces: - a **full Django admin** for system management, - a **brand admin** for managing product data, - and a **retailer admin** for store/network operations. ## Data sources and transparency popuste.rs is built around the idea that public data becomes far more useful when it is properly structured and presented. Where applicable, the platform links back to the official dataset pages and describes how the data is transformed (normalization, categorization, aggregation, and UI presentation). The intent is to make pricing information easier to explore while keeping the provenance of the data clear. ## What’s next The roadmap is focused on making the platform more helpful for real shopping decisions: - improved discount detection and deal ranking, - broader promo and offer coverage, - smarter alerts and watchlists, - and retailer-friendly integration paths for more accurate and timely updates. If you want to follow development, check the News section for release notes, data coverage updates, and feature announcements.