Instacart uses algorithmic pricing

Instacart is an American company which offers a platform to order groceries from major retailers to customers' homes. In FY 2023, Instacart reported 263 million orders and $2.2b gross profit.^[1]On December 9, 2025, Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative released an investigative piece on the use of algorithmic pricing on Instacart's platform. They discovered that customers ordering the same items from the same store location were being offered different prices, with the total order cost varying as much as 8.4%.^[2] Although prices normally vary across locations and times, this is a case of individual customers receiving different prices based on personal data like past purchasing behavior and demographic information.

Background

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rise of instacart, purchase and development of eversight, grocery industry and traditional pricing factors

Algorithmic pricing investigation

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Consumer Reports worked with 437 volunteers in five tests across the country. Four of the tests were conducted through video meetings, and one final test was done in-person. In each test, the volunteers added a fixed basket of items to their cart from the same store on the Instacart app. By controlling for usual factors of price variation like store location and date and time, Consumer Reports found that:^[2]

Three-quarters of products were offered at different prices to different customers.
Products were offered at one to five different prices.
Products on sale for the same price were marketed with varying pre-sale prices.
Customers were grouped into cohorts which received price increases across all the items in their cart instead of on a per-item level.
Across the five tests, the average difference between the minimum and maximum total price was 7%, with the highest difference being 8.4%.

include stores which were found culpable,

Instacart's response

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response in article

Lawsuit

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past ftc guidance, state laws on algorithmic/personal pricing

Consumer response

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consumer reports survey of users, reactions to this article? online coverage of the article? further experiments?

References

↑ "Maplebear Inc. S-1/A Amendment No. 2". SEC EDGAR Archives. 2023-09-15. Retrieved 2025-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Kravitz, Derek (2025-12-09). "Instacart's AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds". Consumer Reports. Retrieved 2025-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[1] "Maplebear Inc. S-1/A Amendment No. 2". SEC EDGAR Archives. 2023-09-15. Retrieved 2025-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[:0-2] 2.0 ^2.1 Kravitz, Derek (2025-12-09). "Instacart's AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds". Consumer Reports. Retrieved 2025-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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