Compulsory auction portals compared, 2026

Compulsory auction hearings are officially announced, not marketed. The central publication platform for this is the ZVG portal of the state justice administrations (zvg-portal.de). Its home page puts it this way: "With this portal, the state justice administrations have created a platform for information on compulsory auction proceedings."

What is published there are the announcements "by the local courts listed in the overview" – so not necessarily by every local court in Germany. On 18 August 2026 all 16 federal states could be selected in the search form; for Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, however, the court list stored there was empty on that day according to our own count. If you are reading into the topic for the first time, start with the beginner's guide.

In any case, only the announcement itself is binding. The portal states: "Only the text of the official announcement is decisive for the validity of the scheduling of the hearing."

Alongside this there are private portals. They do not create hearings of their own; they process the same official source: search across state and court boundaries, maps and radius search, saved searches by e-mail, photos, cost calculators and – with some providers – an automated evaluation of the market value appraisal. This article sets out what was visible on those providers' publicly accessible pages on 18 August 2026.

A disclosure to keep in mind while reading: ZVG Melder is itself one of these private portals and therefore a competitor of the providers named here. That is why ZVG Melder does not appear in the table; our own offering is described further below in a separate section. How we gathered the information, and what we deliberately did not check, is set out under "How we compare".

The portals at a glance

How we compare

We only compare what can be read on a public page. The six criteria in the table are:

• Coverage – which states and courts a provider names, and whether that is the provider's own statement or our count.
• Cost – the amount exactly as the provider prints it.
• Visible without registration – what a visitor without an account actually sees.
• Appraisal – whether the file is reachable, on what condition, and whether it is evaluated.
• Saved search / notification – whether one exists and whether it sits in the free or the paid area.
• Map – map view, radius search, or both.

This is how we gathered it: all pages were called up on 18 August 2026, without an account, without ordering and without payment. We did not see what lies behind a login or a paywall – so we make no statement about that. "No price statement found" means exactly that: no amount appeared on the pages checked. It does not mean an offering will stay free of charge permanently; several providers qualify their own free-of-charge statement ("at present", "currently"). Property and court figures are, unless noted otherwise, the respective site's own statements; we did not verify them independently.

Three limitations that belong to an honest reading of the table:

• The prices are not directly comparable. They cover different scopes, terms and territories – a regional subscription is not the same thing as a nationwide monthly tier, and neither is a single appraisal. We therefore print the amounts as the provider states them and convert nothing.
• Time-limited trials and promotions are not in the table. Several providers advertised free trial periods on 18 August 2026; such promotions change at short notice and would distort the standing price.
• The official ZVG portal is not a competitor but the source. It appears in the table for orientation, not as an offering competing with the private portals for customers. Its purpose is the legally binding announcement – measured against that, the absence of saved searches or maps is not a shortcoming.

Disclosure under § 5a (4) UWG: ZVG Melder is our own product, which makes us a provider in this market ourselves. That is why it does not appear in the table – a provider who picks the criteria should not also grade itself. What ZVG Melder does is described below in our own words, separately from the comparison.

Prices and features change. All statements are as at 18 August 2026. If you find a statement that no longer holds, write to us – we will correct it and note the date of the new check.

What they all have in common

The data source is the same. The local court sets the hearing, and it is announced officially. No portal creates a hearing, postpones it or cancels it. Several providers say so themselves: ZVG Pilot names zvg-portal.de as its source, ZVnow links "Source ZVG portal" on the property page, ZvgScout writes "Much of our data comes from the state's ZVG portal Zvg-Portal.de", and ZVG24 notes on the property that the hearing was "published by the Berlin-Mitte local court on Zvg-Portal.de and found and adopted by our search algorithm".

The liability position is equally common to all. You buy at auction without warranty – the official portal puts it as "The court is not liable for any material or legal defects (§ 56 ZVG)." And in every case what remains decisive is the official announcement, not a portal's rendering of it.

So the question is not who has the hearings. The question is what a portal makes of them, how quickly you hear about it, and how well you can trace a statement back.

How to recognise a useful offering

1. Are the hearings visible free of charge? Hearing date, place, file number and market value come from an official announcement that is open at the court and in the ZVG portal anyway. So check whether a portal shows these details – or whether it holds back individual fields such as the hearing date or the house number. This is not an accusation: research, editing and printed editions cost money, and a provider is entitled to decide what it wants to be paid for. All that matters for you is knowing in advance what you can see without paying.

2. Can you get at the appraisal? The market value appraisal is the most important document before a bid; which points matter in it is set out under reviewing a property. Some portals serve the PDF directly, some after signing in, some after payment, some not at all. Independently of that, the ZVG portal's own guidance applies: "Appraisals, exposés or photos can be inspected on the internet and at the office of the relevant auction court."

3. Are you told about changes? Hearings are postponed and proceedings are cancelled. A saved search that only reports new properties does not help you there. Ask whether cancellations, postponements and second hearings are reported too.

4. Can you trace where a figure comes from? With an automated evaluation this means: for every value you should be able to find the passage in the appraisal again. The providers point this out themselves – ZVnow writes "We strongly recommend checking them", and ZVG Pilot records in its terms that the analysis is "produced fully automatically by an AI language model and may contain errors". The same applies to our own evaluation: it can be wrong too, and the original appraisal remains decisive.

5. What you pay in the end is not decided by the portal. Whether an award is granted and at what level depends on the value thresholds and on your incidental costs – not on the access through which you found the property. For the incidental costs, the cost calculator helps.

And ZVG Melder?

For context, and once again explicitly as a disclosure: ZVG Melder is our own offering, not a neutral winner of this table.

The directory is free of charge. Hearing dates, local court, file number, market value, map and radius search, plus the route to the official announcement, are reachable without an account and without payment. Our data comes from the ZVG portal of the state justice administrations; covered are the 14 federal states that publish there. Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern do not list there – what the source does not carry, we cannot show.

What is chargeable is the AI evaluation of the appraisals – the structured summary of an appraisal and the analyses built on it. What the paid tiers cost is set out on the pricing page; a comparison against the official portal alone is at Comparison.

Here too, what is written above for everyone applies: an automated evaluation can contain errors. The original appraisal and the court's official announcement remain decisive.

In brief

• Official source: the ZVG portal of the state justice administrations; the text of the official announcement is what binds.
• No portal creates hearings. They all work from the same basis.
• Free visibility differs widely – from the complete detail page including the appraisal PDF to pages that hold back the hearing date or the house number.
• Appraisal: sometimes directly as a PDF, sometimes after signing in, sometimes after payment, sometimes not at all. Inspection is possible at the relevant local court.
• Saved searches and maps exist at most providers, partly free of charge, partly in the paid tier.
• Prices are not directly comparable – a regional subscription, a monthly tier and a single appraisal are different things.
• All statements as at: 18 August 2026.

Note: General orientation, not legal advice. The statements about other providers reproduce what stood on their publicly accessible pages on 18 August 2026; we did not check behind logins or paywalls. What counts are the provider's current statements and, for every proceeding, the court's official announcement.

Sources

• ZVG portal of the state justice administrations
• ZVG portal – Notes for bidders
• zvg.com
• zwangsversteigerung.de – order page
• zvg24.net
• argetra.de – prices
• zvg-pilot.de
• zvnow.de
• zvgscout.com – prices
• portal-zvg.de
• § 5 UWG – Misleading commercial practices
• § 5a UWG – Misleading omissions
• § 6 UWG – Comparative advertising
• § 56 ZVG – Exclusion of warranty