In short (as of 3 November 2026): The Buy Box is the offer with the button to buy straight away at the top of a product page. When several sellers offer the same EAN, only one of them gets that place. Kaufland does not publish a full list of criteria; it does state that when offers have the same minimum price, the one with the fastest delivery time wins.
| Topic | What applies |
|---|---|
| Same minimum price | the offer with the fastest delivery time wins |
| Delivery time | processing time (on the offer) plus transport time (in the shipping group), in working days |
| Kaufland’s tips | no invalid items or EANs not found in your account; use Sponsored Product Ads; upload your full assortment; keep prices, shipping costs and delivery times in line with your other platforms |
| Smart Pricing | on as soon as you enter a minimum price; your price never goes below it |
| Buy Box share | in the Global Dashboard, only if you are the only seller or more than five sellers offer the product |
When several sellers offer the same product on Kaufland, one offer gets the prominent place on the product page, with the button to buy straight away. That is the Buy Box. The other offers sit in a list that many buyers never open. The Buy Box is decided per product (per EAN) and per marketplace, so you can hold it on Kaufland.de and miss it on Kaufland.at for the same item.
This article covers what Kaufland makes public about the Buy Box, where you see it, and what you can do about it. Whether a particular Buy Box is worth the price cut has its own article: is every Buy Box worth winning?
What Kaufland publishes, and what it does not
Kaufland does not publish a full list of Buy Box criteria or their weighting. What it does say, as of 30 September 2026:
- Same minimum price, faster delivery wins. On its Smart Pricing page, Kaufland writes that if two or more offers have the same minimum price, the offer with the fastest delivery time wins the Buy Box.
- Kaufland’s own tips. The Seller University’s Buy Box page lists ways to boost sales: no invalid items and no “EANs not found” in your account, use Sponsored Product Ads, upload your full assortment, and keep prices, shipping costs and delivery times in line with your offers on other platforms.
- A “Buy Box logic” in the API. The Seller API has an endpoint, GET /buybox, that returns the offers on one EAN for a given storefront, ranked by Buy Box logic. The documentation does not explain the logic itself.
So price including shipping and delivery time clearly matter. Whether your seller metrics count, and how much each factor weighs, Kaufland does not say. Treat any article that claims to know the exact formula with care.
Where you see the Buy Box in the Seller Portal
- Price competitiveness report. For each offer: your sales price, your minimum price, the lowest market price found through price comparison sites and the current Buy Box price, all including shipping. It also shows a priority score for the product’s relevance in search, where a lower score means more relevant.
- Global Dashboard (beta). Shows your Buy Box share, meaning how often your product won the Buy Box when viewed. Kaufland only shows it if you are the only seller of the product or if more than five sellers offer it.
- Executive Summary. A weekly overview from Ailora, the AI assistant in the Seller Portal, which points out offers close to winning the Buy Box.
The levers you control
1. Price including shipping
The buyer sees one total. A low item price with high shipping is not a low price to them, and Kaufland’s own tips treat price, shipping cost and delivery time together. Remember that shipping costs are shown in each marketplace’s currency: a price that wins in euros on Kaufland.de says nothing about Kaufland.cz in koruna.
2. Delivery time
At an equal minimum price, the fastest delivery wins. Delivery time on Kaufland is processing time (on the offer) plus transport time (in the shipping group), in working days. If you ship across a border, a local seller will often have the shorter transport time. Look for the day you can save on processing: dispatching the same day instead of the next can close the gap. Our article on Kaufland shipping explains how delivery time is built up.
3. Clean product data
Kaufland puts invalid items and EANs not found at the top of its tips. Invalid items are not visible to buyers, and for an EAN without product data you cannot create an offer at all. The free EAN checker catches two common errors: a wrong check digit and a number mangled by a spreadsheet.
4. Your seller metrics
Kaufland measures cancellations, ticket replies and deliveries. It does not say whether they feed into the Buy Box. What is certain: if they stay below target long enough, Kaufland can hide your offers in that sales channel, and a hidden offer wins nothing.
Smart Pricing: letting Kaufland compete for you
Smart Pricing is Kaufland’s own automatic pricing. It switches on as soon as you enter a minimum price, and off when you remove it. There are two models, and the one you choose applies across all your sales channels:
- Smart Pricing Standard (formerly the automatic low-price setting). If your offer wins the Buy Box, Kaufland adjusts your price to match the second-best offer. Kaufland compares it to a second-price sealed auction: the highest bidder wins but pays the second-highest bid.
- Smart Pricing Plus also takes into account the lowest price available online including shipping, based on price comparison sites. Your price moves up or down to that comparison price, never below it. If there is no price data for your EAN yet, Kaufland needs about two days to collect it.
First-time users get Plus by default. Neither model goes below your minimum price. That makes the minimum price the most important number in your Buy Box approach: set it below your break-even and Smart Pricing may win you Buy Boxes that lose money.
A worked example
Say you sell a kitchen item on Kaufland.de for €39.90 including shipping, and another seller holds the Buy Box at €37.90. Kaufland’s commission for kitchen and household is 14% in Germany, on the gross price including shipping and VAT. At €37.90, the price net of 19% German VAT is €31.85, and commission is €5.31 (plus German VAT if your business is established in Germany; from another EU country the reverse charge applies). If your purchase price is €18 and shipping and packaging cost you €6, you keep about €2.54 per unit. At €39.90 you would keep about €3.94. The €2 cut costs you roughly €1.40 per unit, on every unit you would have sold anyway.
Whether the extra sales make up for that depends on your volumes. The free Buy Box price calculator gives you your floor price and says whether a price just under the Buy Box still pays. For the full picture of one product, use the profit calculator.
Where to start
- Work out your break-even per product and per country.
- In the Price competitiveness report, find the offers that miss the Buy Box.
- Sort them by revenue, so you start where the Buy Box is worth most.
- Check delivery time and shipping cost for each before you touch the price.
- Only then set a minimum price, above your break-even, and choose Standard or Plus.
How Sellgrip helps
Sellgrip connects through the Kaufland Seller API. The Buy Box page (Pro and Business) reads Kaufland’s reports on lost and winnable Buy Boxes and puts your costs next to them: for each offer and country, it says whether to lower your price or hold it, with what a cut costs in margin and what it brings in. Minimum prices (Business) proposes a minimum price for Smart Pricing based on your real margin, in all nine Kaufland countries, in koruna and złoty for Czechia and Poland. Pricing rules (Business) turns a rule per product into a price proposal that never goes below your break-even. Sellgrip never changes a price on its own: a price only goes to Kaufland when you click. If you follow Kaufland’s tip to use Sponsored Product Ads, the Ad limit (Pro and Business) shows for each product up to which ACoS an ad still pays.
