Instacart may be charging you more for your groceries

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

If you’ve ever sworn that Instacart charged you more for the same box of cereal your neighbor bought cheaper, you may not be imagining things. 

A new study from Consumer Reports suggests the grocery delivery app may be quietly running pricing experiments that leave some shoppers paying up to 20 percent, or more, extra for identical items.

According to the report, which was conducted alongside research group Groundwork Collaborative, Instacart has been testing AI-driven pricing at stores you definitely recognize. 

We’re talking Kroger, Albertsons, Costco, and Safeway, not exactly mom-and-pop shops experimenting with vibes-based pricing.

In some cases, the study found that shoppers paid as much as 23 percent more than others for the exact same product. 

Same item, same store, same day, just a very different total at checkout. That’s not “oops, inflation,” that’s “wait, why am I funding the CEO’s oat milk habit?”

The tech behind this is a software tool called Eversight, a SaaS platform that promises retailers it can “unlock revenue growth” by finding the optimal price customers are apparently willing to tolerate. 

Instacart does mention on its Eversight page that some shoppers “may see slightly higher prices.” 

Critics point out that a nearly 25 percent bump stretches the definition of “slightly” like it’s made of Silly Putty.

Instacart, for its part, says everyone should calm down. In a statement previously shared with TechCrunch, the company said only a small subset of retail partners, 10 in the US, are involved, and only those already applying markups. 

It also pushed back on the term “dynamic pricing,” insisting these are “AI-enabled pricing experiments,” not real-time price changes or behavior-based targeting. 

According to Instacart, the tests are randomized and not personalized.

Still, the report lands in a moment when dynamic pricing is already under fire. 

Amazon recently faced similar accusations, with critics claiming schools were paying more for supplies due to price fluctuations, claims Amazon has called “flawed and misleading.”

For now, the takeaway is simple: if your Instacart total feels suspiciously high, it might not just be the avocados. It could be the algorithm deciding you look like someone who’ll pay extra.