When and under what conditions do we see preference alignment between participating citizens and interest groups participating in the European Commissions’ consultation regime? Despite the stated goal of the Commission’s Better Regulation Agenda (BRA) to improve and increase citizen participation in online consultations, little is known about the policy preferences citizens express in these consultations and the extent to which they overlap with the preferences of different interest groups. This article argues that consultations on policy issues with more concentrated costs and diffuse benefits, are likely to mobilize citizens and interest groups with relevant specialized knowledge, which increases preference alignment on these issues. The article further argues that interest groups with traditionally more outsider resources, have more experience with mobilizing citizens, which has a positive effect on preference alignment with the participating citizens. The argument is tested based on a dataset consisting of stakeholder responses to online public consultation questionnaires. To test the argument, I regress a dyadic dependent variable to measuring preference alignment on variables capturing policy issue-specific and interest group-specific characteristics. This article will contribute to our knowledge about the lobbying behavior of individual citizens participating in consultations and their preference similarity to different interest groups.