Is kakaku.com legit or a scam?
Kakaku.com is an established Japanese price-comparison platform (founded 1997, Tokyo Stock Exchange listed) with clean security scans and no evidence of fraudulent operation.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
Kakaku.com is a legitimate, long-established Japanese e-commerce platform founded in December 1997 and publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market under ticker 2371. Our antivirus network flagged zero malicious detections across 92 engines, the hosting IP has zero abuse reports, and SSL is valid with 164 days to expiry. The domain is 28 years old (10,199 days), registered with GMO Internet Group, and headquartered in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo with 916 million yen in capital and approximately 1,400 employees. Independent sources including Wikipedia, business registries, and review aggregators confirm the company operates legitimately as a price-comparison and product-review service. Two old BBS threads from 2013 and 2020 mention fraud concerns, but both relate to third-party sellers on the platform or phishing emails impersonating the site—not the site itself. The company actively warns users about phishing scams targeting its brand.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for kakaku.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Established in December 1997 as Kakaku.com, Inc. (株式会社カカクコム), operates Japan's largest price comparison and product review site along with Tabelog (restaurant reviews).
- Publicly traded on Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market under ticker 2371 until recent 2026 EQT tender offer to privatize (valued at ~$3.76 billion).
- Headquartered at Digital Gate Building, 3-5-7 Ebisu-Minami, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0022; capital 916 million yen; ~1,400 employees.
- High traffic site (ranked ~180 by Tranco); provides user reviews, price comparisons for electronics, appliances, fashion etc.; company warns users about phishing/scam emails impersonating it.
- Reddit users discuss seller trustworthiness on the platform (aggregator of third-party vendors); some old BBS threads ask about potential fraud on linked shops but conclude no direct scam by kakaku.com.
- No evidence of the domain itself being a scam; Scamadviser rates it as legit and safe; corporate profile, Wikipedia, Yahoo Finance, Reuters all confirm legitimate operations.
- Scamadviseropen
"It seems that kakaku.com is legit and safe to use and not a scam website."
- Wikipediaopen
"Kakaku.com, Inc. ... is a Japanese company that operates Kakaku.com (from 価格) "Price.com", a comparison shopping website... Founded December 1997."
- Reddit (r/japanlife)open
"kakaku.com is an aggregator... Most of them are quite trustworthy, but always read reviews."
Publicly listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market (code: 2371), founded Dec 1997, capital 916 million yen, address in Shibuya-ku Tokyo, qualified invoice number T9011001065997
Kakaku.com, Inc. is a publicly listed Japanese company founded in December 1997, operating Japan's largest price-comparison and product-review platform. The company is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market (ticker 2371) and was valued at approximately $3.76 billion in a 2026 EQT tender offer to privatize. Headquarters: Digital Gate Building, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; capital 916 million yen; approximately 1,400 employees.
Two old BBS threads (2013, 2020) mention fraud concerns. The 2013 thread asks whether kakaku.com itself is a scam; the response concludes no direct scam by the platform but recommends cash-on-delivery to avoid seller disputes. The 2020 thread reports a phishing scam email impersonating kakaku.com; the user contacted police. Neither thread implicates the site itself.
Independent review aggregators rate kakaku.com as legitimate and safe. Wikipedia confirms the company's founding, business model, and public listing. Business registration data shows active status in Japan with qualified invoice number T9011001065997. The company actively warns users about phishing and scam emails using its brand.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://kakaku.com/
- 2200https://kakaku.com/
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on kakaku.com and not a lookalike like k-akaku.com.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on kakaku.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- kakaku.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 94/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. kakaku.com presents a valid TLSv1.2 certificate issued by DigiCert Inc · DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1, expiring in 164 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- kakaku.com is 27.9 years old, registered on 7/8/1998 through GMO Internet Group, Inc. d/b/a Onamae.com. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report kakaku.com as clean.
- No. kakaku.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- kakaku.com resolves to an IP operated by Cloudflare, Inc. in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. kakaku.com sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
User reviews & comments(0)
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