Instacart (CART) bans AI-driven pricing tests following backlash
Following customer backlash and government scrutiny, Instacart (CART) said on Monday that it will no longer allow retailers on its grocery delivery platform to conduct AI-driven pricing tests.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent Instacart a civil investigative demand last week seeking information about its AI pricing tool Eversight, according to Reuters.
The tool allows retailers on Instacart to experiment with pricing using AI.
The FTC probe came after a study released earlier this month found that consumers using the app were being charged different prices for the same groceries.
The study, called “Same Cart, Different Price: Instacart’s Price Experiments Cost Families at Checkout,” analyzed 437 shoppers across four different US cities and found that they "are unknowingly enrolled in AI-enabled experiments that can charge up to 23% more for the same item ordered from the same store at the same time."
On average, the study found a 7% difference between the total cost for the same grocery list at the same store.
The study was conducted by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union. It involved overseeing simultaneous online shopping sessions with hundreds of volunteers.
Instacart acknowledged in a blog post on Monday that some of the coverage it received over its Eversight tool "raised fair questions," but added that "much of it" also included "misconceptions and misinformation about what we do - and don't do - when it comes to prices."
But the company said it understood "that the tests we ran with a small number of retail partners that resulted in different prices for the same item at the same store missed the mark for some customers."
Eversight allows retailers to experiment with algorithmic pricing in order to gauge how shoppers respond to prices as they go higher or lower.
“At a time when families are working exceptionally hard to stretch every grocery dollar, those tests raised concerns, leaving some people questioning the prices they see on Instacart,” the company said. “That’s not okay – especially for a company built on trust, transparency, and affordability.”
Affordability has arguably become the biggest hot-button political issue in the US as the year comes to a close, leading President Trump to address the nation on the topic last week.
Instacart noted that retailers will still be able to set their own prices on Instacart and can continue to vary the price of grocery items on a store-by-store basis. But they will no longer be able to experiment with prices of the same items being sold at the same store.
Shares of Maplebear (CART), Instacart's parent company, fell 2% on Monday.
In an emailed statement to Reuters last week, an FTC spokesperson declined to comment on the investigation, but said that the agency was "disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart’s alleged pricing practices."
The study's authors said that they chose Instacart for their investigation because it is "by far the most dominant e-commerce grocery platform" in the US, with 250 million orders in the first three quarters of 2025.