About
The People's Price shows what everyday items would cost today if their prices had risen only as fast as a typical paycheck since 2019, and compares that with what they actually cost.
How it works
For each item we take its average price across all of 2019, before the pandemic, and grow it by how much median weekly pay for full-time workers has grown since then. That's the People's Price. We also show the 2019 price grown 2% a year, the Federal Reserve's inflation target, as a stricter benchmark.
Goods use average retail prices published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Services, clothing, household goods, tech and medicines don't have one national price, so they're shown per $100 spent in 2019, using the BLS consumer price index for each. Prices update automatically when BLS publishes new data, about once a month.
A price above the People's Price isn't proof of overcharging. Some things cost more for real reasons, like a bird flu outbreak, a poor harvest or a smaller cattle herd. The People's Price is a benchmark for affordability, not a judgment on any store or company.
Who runs it
The People's Price is an independent project. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by BLS or any government agency, company or political group. Questions, corrections and ideas are welcome at hello@thepeoplesprice.org.
Privacy
Last updated November 2, 2026.
- What you type stays on your device. Item searches and prices you enter are worked out in your browser. We don't store them on a server, and we don't ask for your name, email or location.
- Saved settings. Your browser remembers the state and light or dark mode you last chose, so the page opens the same way next time. These settings stay on your device and you can clear them in your browser settings.
- Visitor statistics. We may use Google Analytics to count visits and see which items people look up, so we know what to improve. Google Analytics uses cookies and collects information such as pages viewed, approximate location (country or city), device and browser type, and how you arrived. We don't use it for advertising or to identify you. Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are not tracked with cookies. Learn how Google uses this data at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, or opt out with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
- Hosting. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may log visitors' IP addresses for security, as described in GitHub's privacy statement.
- Fonts. Fonts load from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when the page loads.
- No selling of data. We don't sell or share personal information. If we add advertising in the future, we'll update this policy first.
Questions about privacy: hello@thepeoplesprice.org.
Data sources
BLS Average Price Data, the BLS Consumer Price Index and BLS Usual Weekly Earnings.