5 Major Grocery Chains That Use Dynamic Pricing

How often do grocery prices change? It might seem like they're always going up, and it's true that groceries are generally getting more expensive. But supermarkets regularly change prices on individual items for a variety of reasons, such as seasonal availability, short-term discounts, and overall demand. But quicker, targeted changes have a name: dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing means that the cost of an item may increase or decrease, as determined by algorithms that weigh factors like supply and demand or the retailer's amount of stock. That might mean an in-store price increase of $1 one day but then a $2.50 drop the next, or it might mean two customers using the same website will see different prices for the same items. Walmart, Target, Kroger, Wegmans, and grocers that work with Instacart have all used dynamic pricing systems like these.

How does it work? It's not an army of speedy supermarket workers zipping around the store and posting different price stickers. In-store dynamic pricing requires the prices to change in an instant — meaning the price tags have to be digital, a tactic many grocery chains have adopted. Online, it's not always clear when prices change since retailers typically aren't required to disclose when or how they've adjusted costs (though a 2026 FTC rule requires retailers to disclose personalized prices). Even retailers that use dynamic pricing don't all use it the same way, and it doesn't always result in higher prices.

A spring 2026 report from Decodo found that Walmart changed nearly 70,000 prices over the course of the survey. That places the retail behemoth as the second-most frequent user of dynamic pricing according to the report, with Amazon leading the charge. Walmart is known for its affordability and regularly cuts prices on grocery items. As a matter of fact, Decodo even found that about 53% of those price changes were actually decreases, not increases. Plus, about 8% of the products available at Walmart didn't change price at all.

But the mega-retailer maintains that those price changes are simply normal fluctuations that any retailer would have. "We don't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won't," said Walmart CEO John Furner in a September 2026 press release. "Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won't change the price."

Some customers aren't buying it. One Reddit user, for example, posted screenshots of two apparently identical hard drives on Walmart's website, one priced at $259 and another at $369 — which the user claimed only occurred after they opened the page in a new tab to check specifications. It's not entirely clear, though, whether this was related to the customer's browsing or other factors, like the shipping location or third-party vendors. It's also unclear whether the same changes occur on food items.

Decodo's 2026 report found similar sticker adjustments happening at Target: During the survey period, the retailer changed prices over 39,000 times. More than half of these were decreases, but Target's price changes are much different from Walmart's in other ways. For one, nearly 42% of the items' prices didn't change at all — far more than Walmart. And most pricing changes occurred on Saturdays, likely to adjust for higher weekend traffic (but not necessarily to make things more expensive on weekends).

Also unlike Walmart, Target acknowledges that it uses personal data to change prices. The app provides a disclaimer in places where it's legally required: "This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data" (via Wired). And in 2019, an investigation by KARE 11 in Minneapolis (the chain's hometown) found that customers saw higher prices in the app if they were standing inside the store as opposed to outside of it — even as close as the parking lot.

It's not unusual to have different prices in different store locations, though. Even famously budget-friendly grocer Aldi sets local prices at different levels in each store. And the same principle applies to ordering from Target online: The prices will vary based on where the order is fulfilled. "For online orders that are fulfilled by our stores, prices reflect the local market," a Target spokesperson told HuffPost in 2021. That can explain some — but not all — of the chain's pricing variation.

Kroger, one of the nation's largest supermarket chains by sales volume (per Progressive Grocer), is developing an extensive customer-tracking system that integrates with its shelf price tags. It's called EDGE, which stands for Enhanced Display for Grocery Environment. It uses cameras and Bluetooth sensors to show customers specific ads and offers based on their purchase history and even shopping lists stored on their phones.

Does that sound futuristic and cutting-edge or disturbing and dystopian? Some high-profile figures think it's the latter. In 2024, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Robert P. Casey Jr. sent a letter to the supermarket chain expressing their doubts. They highlighted privacy and price-gouging concerns, accusing Kroger of "quickly updating and displaying the customer's maximum willingness to pay on the digital price tag — a corporate profiteering capability that would be impossible using a mere paper price tag."

There's no documented evidence that Kroger has specifically used EDGE to raise prices for certain shoppers while giving others lower costs, and the supermarket chain hasn't specified how or if the system changes prices for customers. In fact, the grocer has denied the senators' claims, saying that "Kroger does not and has never engaged in 'surge pricing'" (via CNBC). A researcher who's studied the subject, Ioannis Stamatopoulos, agrees with Kroger. "The facts show there is no surge pricing currently occurring," he told CNBC of his 2025 study on the matter.

The northeast cult-favorite grocery chain Wegmans has gotten progressively more high-tech in recent years. In-store, the grocer still primarily uses paper tags, meaning the possibility of changing prices in response to the specific customer entering the aisle is all but zero. Still, that's not to say the chain hasn't used dynamic pricing in some form. On its digital platforms, Wegmans changed prices nearly 13,000 times, according to the 2026 Decodo report (via Supermarket News). As with the other retailers Decodo analyzed, Wegmans' price changes were most often drops, not increases.

When the chain introduced facial recognition technology at certain locations, concerns grew that the chain was testing the tech to integrate with pricing systems, just as Kroger has reportedly done. Wegmans categorically denies this. The facial recognition systems are only there to "enhance the physical safety of our people and our customers," the chain told Eater in 2024. The facial recognition controversy centered on two New York City locations, and evidence appears to show that Wegmans is right: It doesn't seem possible that facial recognition could change prices in the aisles because both stores have paper price tags, meaning the store can't update them instantaneously.

Instacart isn't itself a grocery store, but that's not to say it doesn't play a major role in U.S. grocery business. In 2025, the app reported $3.7 billion in revenue with 10 million active users (via Business of Apps). Instacart has also been one of the highest-profile users of dynamic pricing, which makes sense — there are no physical price tags to change, just numbers on a screen.

In the past, those numbers have changed significantly depending on the customer, as a 2025 Consumer Reports investigation found. In fact, the organization revealed that prices at Instacart-affiliated grocery stores could vary by as much as 23% depending on the user's personal data. Instacart said the price changes were part of a series of experiments. "These limited, short-term, and randomized tests help retail partners learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable," the company told the outlet. Still, the difference for consumers is big: Prices on the overall grocery basket tested could vary nearly $10 depending on the shopper.

In response to the investigation, Instacart announced in December 2025 that it was ending the AI-based dynamic pricing program. The company denies any similar projects have happened since. "We will never use your personal information to set prices," Instacart specifies on its website. "We do not — and we never will — change item prices or membership prices based on supply and demand signals or real-time data."