This article is part of Consumer Reports’ Make the Price Right series, which launched with our investigation into pricing inaccuracies at Kroger stores.
Testing, research, and analysis by Derek Kravitz, Angel Han, and Alan Smith of Consumer Reports; Lindsay Owens and Katie Wells of Groundwork Collaborative; and Eric Gardner of More Perfect Union. Statistical analysis by Debasmita Morgan and Nayeon Kim for Consumer Reports. Data visualizations by Evan O’Neil.
Many U.S. shoppers who order grocery deliveries through Instacart are unknowingly part of widespread AI-enabled experiments that price identical products differently from one customer to the next—sometimes by as much as 23 percent. Instacart’s algorithmic pricing experiments were found to be occurring through the platform at several of the nation’s biggest grocery retailers, including Albertsons, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, and Target. These are among the findings of a monthslong investigation by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative, as part of a larger project with More Perfect Union, two nonprofit organizations with experience analyzing food prices.
Algorithmic pricing is usually invisible to consumers, who typically see only the prices and fees they’re offered. Researchers, meanwhile, are rarely granted access to the complex systems of algorithms, artificial intelligence, and data that parcel out individualized prices. CR’s investigation, which involved orchestrating simultaneous online shopping sessions with hundreds of volunteers, aimed to peek inside the black box.
Instacart has disclosed its pricing experiments in corporate marketing and investor materials, noting that “shoppers are not aware that they’re in an experiment.” But the company described the resulting price differences as small and “negligible.”
Our investigation suggests that the scope of Instacart’s price experiments—which are taking place against the backdrop of the fastest increase in food prices since the late 1970s—is far broader and more costly to some consumers than has been publicly acknowledged. Every one of the volunteer shoppers who participated in our tests was subject to algorithmic price experiments.
In response to our questions, Instacart confirmed that our findings accurately reflect its pricing experiments and strategies, which it said were ongoing at 10 partnering grocery retailers at the time of our investigation. The company declined to name them, however, and said the experiments affect only a small portion of its retail partners, have a limited impact on consumer pocketbooks, and are similar to well-established in-store pricing practices.
“Just as retailers have long tested prices in their physical stores to better understand consumer preferences, a subset of only 10 retail partners—ones that already apply markups—do the same online via Instacart. These limited, short-term, and randomized tests help retail partners learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable,” the company wrote in a statement. (See additional Instacart responses, below.)
Charging different amounts to different customers for the same products is not illegal or new. U.S. consumers have grown accustomed to paying different prices for the same airline seats, event tickets, hotel rooms, rideshares, and certain other goods and services that are subject to rapidly changing shifts in supply and demand.
But consumers express deep misgivings about algorithmically driven changes in pricing when it comes to more essential goods like food. A nationally representative CR survey of 2,240 U.S. adults conducted in September 2025 found that 72 percent of people who have used Instacart in the previous year did not want the company to charge different users different prices for any reason. Instacart shoppers we spoke to say they were unaware that they were participants in active Instacart pricing experiments and view the practice as manipulative and unfair.
Experts also warn that algorithmic pricing—when combined with artificial intelligence and the massive amounts of personal data collected on U.S. consumers—could evolve into a more pernicious pricing strategy called “surveillance pricing,” which involves using personal characteristics, behaviors, and things like your shopping history to set individualized prices.
“All of us, without our knowledge, are being conscripted in this enormous and growing social experiment being conducted by companies across a wide range of industries,” says Len Sherman, an adjunct professor and executive-in-residence at Columbia Business School in New York City, whose research examines the proliferation of algorithmic pricing. “Every step that we take as a consumer is being bundled together in these massive databases and being analyzed so that the next time we confront a purchase decision, everything we’ve ever done is going to factor into the price we see.”
