Most pages that sell a service explain why you need it. This one spends more room on when you do not.
That is not modesty. A screen is a fixed-price step with a narrow job: to tell you whether a deal deserves your lawyer's hours and your deposit. In four common situations it cannot do that job, and paying for it would buy you a document instead of an answer.
What it costs
Three fixed fees, published on the pricing page and never quoted per hour:
- 99 € — up to three listings, one report each, produced by our own algorithm in minutes. It reads the advertisement against the market: how long the listing has really existed, where the asking price sits among comparable ones, and what the advertisement does not say.
- 550 € — a person reads the public records for one named business, and you get a two-page decision memo within 48 hours of the clock starting.
- 950 € — the seller's own figures tested against the seller's own documents. It does not start without them; if the documents do not arrive, the case is delivered as a 550 € screen and the difference is credited.
There is no commission on the deal and no contact with the seller, at any tier. What sets the price is not the size of the business — it is how much of the work a machine can do and how much a person has to.
When you should not pay for one
1 · The deal is small enough that the screen changes nothing
If the whole transfer costs a few thousand euros and the equipment is worth most of that, a fixed fee eats a visible share of the purchase. At that size, walking the street, talking to the neighbouring shops and asking the landlord directly will tell you more per euro than any desk work. Do that first.
2 · You already have the seller's documents and someone who reads them
If the accounts, the bank statements and the lease are already in your hands and your own accountant is going through them, the desk stage is behind you. What you need next is someone who can challenge those documents, not someone who tells you what the public registers say about a business you can already see from the inside.
3 · The listing is anonymous and stays anonymous
Public records are searched by name. If the advertisement names no business, no address and no tax number, and the seller will not give one before a deposit, there is nothing to search. A screen would still tell you what the market looks like around the listing. That is real information, and it is exactly what the 99 € tier is for. But it cannot check a business that has not been identified. Pay for the tier that matches what you actually have.
4 · You have already decided to buy
If the decision is made and what you need is a contract, terms and someone answerable for them, go straight to a lawyer. A screen exists to decide whether the deal is worth that spend. Once you have decided, it is a step you have already passed.
What it does not do, at any price
It does not audit or confirm the seller's accounts. It does not value the business. It does not visit the premises, and it issues no clearance of any kind. The strongest thing a screen can honestly report is that nothing showed up in the sources it names. Each source is listed with the date it was read, and every blind spot is written down beside them.
It is a commercial reading of public information, not legal, tax or investment advice.
The honest order
Look at the listing yourself. If it survives that, a screen tells you whether it deserves a lawyer. If it does, the lawyer takes over and we are done.
A screen is a filter before the lawyer, not a substitute for one. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you the wrong thing.
Where this fits. Three fixed tiers — €99, €550, €950 — and, before any of them, the four situations above where the honest answer is not yet.
Check my deal →This note describes our own published tiers, terms and prices as they stand on 15 August 2026. It is a commercial reading of public information, not legal, tax or investment advice.