Price History of Everyday Items

01Look Up Any Item

Pick an item to see its price every month since the Bureau started publishing it, in the dollars of the day or in today's dollars. For what the same things cost in hours of work instead of dollars, see the Hours-of-Work Price Museum; to convert any amount between years, use the Inflation Calculator.

02Every Item at a Glance

All 64 items, with the latest price and how it has moved. Each item is shown at its own latest month, which is usually September 2026 but can be earlier when the Bureau did not publish a price that month; the 1-year and 10-year changes compare that month with the same month earlier. The last column takes inflation out: a negative number means the item costs less now, in today's dollars, than when the series began. Tap a column heading to sort, or an item to look it up above.

03A Basket of Groceries Through the Years

One each of a handful of staples, including a gallon of whole milk and a pound of ground beef, at each year's average price since 1996 (the first full year the Bureau priced whole milk by the gallon), in the dollars of the day and in today's dollars. The sticker total climbs steadily; the inflation-adjusted total shows whether the basket really got more expensive.

04What Really Got More Expensive

Every item tracked since 1990 or earlier, by how much its price has changed after inflation since the series began. Bars to the left got cheaper relative to everything else; bars to the right outran inflation.

05How This Page Works

Prices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics average prices for the U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, for every item it still publishes, read from its public data files each month. The regional averages are for the latest month. Item names are shortened from the Bureau's descriptions, which are shown under each name.

Today's dollars. Each month's price times the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-U, all items) in the latest month, divided by the index in that month. Records in today's dollars use the same conversion.

What these numbers measure. These are changes in published average prices, not a constant-product inflation index. The mix of products, package sizes and stores the Bureau samples changes over time, so part of a long-run change can reflect that rather than the price of an identical item. The Consumer Price Index is built to control for those shifts, which is why it is the better measure of inflation itself.

Yearly averages use the months published in that year; years with fewer than six months are left out of the yearly table. In today's dollars, each month is adjusted first and then averaged. Records are the highest price in each item's published series, and series start in different years.

Data through September 2026; CPI through September 2026; page data rebuilt November 9, 2026. Related: Hours-of-Work Price Museum · Inflation Calculator · Historical Mortgage Rates · Financial Tools.

06Frequently Asked Questions

07Sources

• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Average price data (how the averages are collected)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: average price data files (every series on this page)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index (CPI-U all items, for today's dollars)