The numbers
Same item, same moment, very different prices
Real examples from our live recheck on November 5, 2026, between 3:08 and 3:25 p.m. Eastern. Every listing below is the identical item, new, in stock and sold by the retailer itself, with free shipping.
Ninja Air Fryer Pro XL 6-in-1 (AF181)
$80.00 gap- Best Buy$99.99
- Target$99.99
- JCPenney$99.99
- Lowe's$157.28
- Kohl's$179.99
- Macy's$179.99
- Wayfair$179.99
- Bloomingdale's$179.99
Dyson Ball Animal 3 upright vacuum
$150.99 gap- Home Depot$299.00
- Macy's$299.99
- Bloomingdale's$299.99
- Target$449.99
- Wayfair$449.99
- Target$199.99
- JCPenney$199.99
- Amazon$199.99
- Bloomingdale's$319.95
- Belk$319.95
- Kohl's$349.99
- Wayfair$219.95
- Target$219.99
- Home Depot$219.99
- Best Buy$219.99
- Lowe's$219.99
- Macy's$367.00
Beats Studio Buds+
$70.04 gap- Amazon$99.95
- Target$99.99
- Macy's$116.99
- Lowe's$149.00
- Kohl's$169.99
- Nordstrom$449.99
- Wayfair$449.99
- JCPenney$449.99
- Macy's$749.99
Listed prices at the time we checked. Some stores, Kohl's and Macy's among them, often take extra coupons at checkout, which these prices don't include. Prices change: check before you buy.
Every extra store you check pays off
How far above the lowest price you'd pay, on average, after checking 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the big retailers, in any order. Most of the saving comes from the second and third store.
Tracked prices, 4,684 products sold at four or more of the big retailers. Our live recheck with strict matching (47 products) found the same drop: 20.3% → 8.9% → 3.7% → 0.8%.
Even the biggest stores aren't always cheapest
Starting at each store: how often another of the 16 big retailers listed the same item for less, at the same time.
"Cheaper" means more than 1% less. The live recheck's samples are small, so read them as a check on the direction rather than a precise rate.
How we measured
Tracked prices. Deal.ai's shopping agent records the prices it sees at each store every day. From October 29 to November 4, 2026, we took new items listed by two or more of these retailers: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Macy's, Home Depot, Lowe's, Kohl's, Nordstrom, Wayfair, Newegg, B&H Photo, JCPenney, Bloomingdale's, Zappos, Belk. Each store's price had to be checked within an hour of the others, and each product counted once, on its latest qualifying day. We left out 5,172 product-days where one store's price was more than twice another's, since those are usually a different size, pack or bundle. That left 24,394 products.
Live recheck. On November 5, 2026, we drew 600 of those products at random, fixed the list before reading any price, and looked each one up again, reading every store's price at the same moment. We kept the 383 with a brand and a model number or barcode. A separate AI model then compared each store's own listing title with the product, with prices hidden, and kept only listings that were the identical item: same model, size, capacity, pack count and generation, colour aside. Of 4,990 store listings, 1,886 passed. 146 products were left with two or more of the big retailers.
What these numbers don't show
- They cover products Deal.ai's shopping agent researched, from shoppers' searches and its own deal-finding, not a random sample of everything sold.
- They compare listed prices, before shipping, tax, coupons and memberships. In the live recheck, adding each store's stated shipping changed the results only slightly, but for a given order shipping can decide which store is cheapest.
- An Amazon or Walmart listing can come from a marketplace seller rather than the retailer itself. Most of the Walmart listings in the live sample were from marketplace sellers.
- Matching products across stores is imperfect. The live recheck used strict matching to test the larger tracked-price figures; the two point the same way, but the tracked figures will include some near-identical items.
- One week in the lead-up to Black Friday (October 29 to November 4, 2026) says nothing certain about Black Friday itself or other times of year.
For journalists
Quote and chart these figures freely with a credit to Deal.ai. We can pull a cut for a category or a set of products your readers care about, or check this week's doorbusters across stores for a segment.
Deal.ai, "Same product, different price: how much checking more stores saves," November 2026, https://deal.ai/research/price-gaps-november-2026
About Deal.ai. Deal.ai is an AI shopping agent that compares prices across stores and sends shoppers to the retailer to buy. As an Amazon Associate, Deal.ai earns from qualifying purchases. That doesn't change these figures, which come from listed prices at each store.
Corrections. None so far. Spot an error? Email press@deal.ai and we'll correct it here with a note.
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