Instacart Pulls the Plug on “Secret” AI Price Experiments

CNBC, AP, CBS News, and Axios contributed to this report.

Instacart is officially done letting retailers play lab-coat economist on your grocery cart.

On Monday, the delivery giant said it will no longer allow retailers to run AI-powered pricing tests on its platform—ending a controversial practice that had some shoppers paying different prices for the exact same item from the exact same store, sometimes at the exact same time.

The decision lands after weeks of heat from consumer advocates and regulators, and it’s Instacart acknowledging—pretty bluntly—that the whole thing dented trust.

“We understand that the tests… missed the mark for some customers,” the company wrote, adding that in a moment when families are “stretch[ing] every grocery dollar,” giving people different prices for the same product was “not okay.”

Instacart had been using tech from Eversight, a pricing software company it bought in 2022 for $59 million. The pitch was simple: retailers could test small price changes on certain items and see how shoppers reacted—basically A/B testing, but for your pantry.

The backlash came after a study released earlier this month found Instacart’s pricing tools led to different shoppers seeing different prices for identical products at the same retailer. The researchers said the same basket of goods could vary by about 7%, which could add up to more than $1,000 a year in extra costs for some customers.

That’s the kind of stat that instantly makes people feel like they’ve been played—even if the price changes are “random.”

Instacart’s response at the time was: retailers set prices, not Instacart. It also pushed back hard on the labels, saying this wasn’t “dynamic pricing” (prices spiking with demand) or “surveillance pricing” (prices tailored to your personal profile). Instacart insisted the tests weren’t based on personal or demographic data.

But here’s the problem: shoppers don’t experience it as a technical debate. They experience it as:

“Why did my eggs cost more than my neighbor’s?”

The issue didn’t stay in the consumer-complaint lane for long. Federal regulators questioned Instacart about the pricing tools, and reports said the company received a formal request for information about its practices.

That scrutiny also came as Instacart was already dealing with another ugly headline: it was ordered to pay $60 million in refunds tied to a separate federal case involving allegations of deceptive tactics around subscriptions and fee disclosures. Instacart denied wrongdoing, but the timing didn’t help. When you’re already arguing you’re transparent, a pricing experiment that looks hidden is about the worst possible side quest.

Instacart says retailers can still set their own prices on the platform, and stores can still charge different prices at different physical locations—normal retail stuff.

But the company says it’s ending the specific feature that let retailers run item-level price experiments through Eversight on Instacart. In plain English: if two people open Instacart at the same moment and shop the same store, they shouldn’t be treated like contestants in a pricing game show.

This isn’t just about Instacart. It’s about the bigger question hanging over modern shopping: are prices still prices, or are they suggestions generated by software?

AI pricing tools are spreading across retail because they promise higher margins with minimal backlash—as long as nobody notices. Instacart got noticed.

And once shoppers start suspecting the number on the screen depends on luck, timing, or an algorithm’s mood, the whole system starts to feel shaky. Instacart built itself as the “trust me, it’ll be easy” layer between customers and grocery stores. If customers start second-guessing every item, that convenience brand collapses fast.

Instacart seems to have read the room. The company’s message was basically: people should never feel like they need a detective badge just to buy cereal.