Idealista Alerts vs Prio: Why Platform Notifications Are Slow
If you have ever wondered why you always seem to be too late when responding to Idealista listings, you are not imagining things. There is a measurable delay between when a listing is published on Idealista and when you receive the notification. We measured it.
How Idealista notifications work
When a landlord or agency publishes a listing on Idealista, it does not appear in search results immediately. The listing goes through a pipeline:
- The listing enters Idealista's master database
- Idealista's search index (Elasticsearch) picks it up in a batch process, roughly every 10 seconds
- The listing becomes visible in search results
- Idealista's notification system detects it matches saved searches
- Push notifications are sent to users via Firebase Cloud Messaging
Each step adds latency. The total delay from publication to push notification landing on your phone is typically 45 seconds to 2 minutes.
What we measured
We compared the timestamp when our system first detects a new listing in Idealista's database versus when Idealista's own search results show it. The results over thousands of listings:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Prio detection (median) | 10 to 22 seconds after publication |
| Idealista search results | ~10 seconds after publication |
| Idealista push notification | ~55 seconds after publication |
| Net advantage (Prio vs Idealista push) | 33 to 45 seconds |
For Fotocasa, the advantage is even larger at around 19 seconds of detection advantage. For Badi, our system detects listings 10 to 15 minutes before they appear in search results because we catch listings while they are still in draft state.
Why does 30 to 45 seconds matter?
In Barcelona's rental market, a good listing receives its first inquiry within 2 minutes. The first 10 to 15 people to contact the landlord typically get scheduled for a viewing. Everyone else gets ignored or waitlisted.
Being 45 seconds faster does not guarantee you get the apartment. But it puts you in the first wave of respondents instead of the second. Over a multi week search, that advantage adds up significantly.
What about Fotocasa and Badi?
Fotocasa has a similar pipeline to Idealista. Their notifications are slightly slower on average. Our detection advantage is about 19 seconds.
Badi is the most interesting case. Badi's internal API exposes listings in draft state before they are visible in search results. This means Prio users see Badi rooms 10 to 15 minutes before anyone checking the Badi app or website. For shared housing in Barcelona (approximately 300 active rooms), this is a massive advantage.
A note on fairness
We are not exploiting a bug or a vulnerability. We are simply checking for new listings more frequently than a human can. Idealista, Fotocasa, and Badi all make their listings publicly available. We just look at them faster.
Think of it like refreshing a job board every few seconds instead of waiting for an email digest. Same information, different timing.
See the difference yourself
Prio's free tier shows you the same listings, with a short delay. The paid tier delivers alerts the moment we detect them. Either way, you can see the speed difference with your own eyes. Try it free