Instacart’s AI-enabled pricing may be inflating your grocery bill

CHARLOTTE — If you use Instacart for grocery deliveries, you may be paying more than your next-door neighbor, and you wouldn’t even know it.

A new Consumer Reports investigation found Instacart has been running AI-assisted pricing experiments on shoppers across several major grocery chains. In some cases, shoppers saw prices that were 23% more for the exact same item.

Instacart’s pricing experiments affected shoppers at major retailers including Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts, and Albertsons, according to the findings.

“We had hundreds of volunteers across the country shop for the same exact grocery products at the same exact time, and in every single case, they were subject to price experiments,” Consumer Reports’ investigative reporter Derek Kravitz said.

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Consumer Reports says those price differences can add up. At one Safeway in the Seattle area, the same basket of groceries ranged from about $114 to nearly $124.

“Based on the variations we saw and using Instacart’s numbers for how much a typical household of four spends on groceries in a given year, that could mean a price swing of about $1,200,” Kravitz said.

Instacart confirmed the findings of Consumer Reports but stated that only 10 retailers use its pricing tools, and insisted that most customers still see standard prices without using personal or demographic data.

Target claimed it had no business relationship with Instacart, while Safeway, Costco, and Kroger did not respond to Consumer Reports’ inquiries. Sprouts declined to comment.

Consumer Reports advises shoppers to buy groceries in person when possible and use money-saving strategies, like planning lists and buying in bulk.

Multiple states are considering banning surveillance pricing altogether for certain retailers. New York requires clear disclaimers with any algorithm-set price. So far, there are no such regulations in the works in North Carolina.

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