Our methodology

The problem we exist to fix

Search "[any chain] prices" and you'll find pages of confident-looking numbers with no dates and no sources — many invented to catch your click. Meanwhile, several chains deliberately publish no menu at all. So we track prices the way it should be done, and show our work.

What this site is actually becoming

We started out thinking of this as a mirror: chains publish prices, we collect them, date them and put them side by side. That was the plan in July 2026. It is not quite what the work turned into.

When we started checking chains' own websites properly rather than trusting price-guide sites, we kept finding no price to mirror. We counted it: of the 40 chains we have audited so far, 22 publish no customer price at all, and only 8 print a number you can read before you book. That is not a uniform story and we would rather report the awkward version: gyms, audited on 7 September 2026, were markedly more open than massage or pet grooming, which is evidence against the tidier claim that everyone is going quiet at once. The full audit, with every chain named and dated, is on who still publishes a price?

So the honest description of this site is no longer "a mirror of published prices." It is a dated outside record of what national chains charge — increasingly, for services where no other record exists. That changes what we owe you, in three specific ways:

• Published and observed are different things, and we mark which is which. A published figure is one the company prints. An observed figure is one we compiled from location pages, price guides or customer reports because the company prints none. Observed numbers are weaker evidence, and a growing share of this dataset is observed. Pretending otherwise would be the easiest way for us to become the thing we criticise.
• The dates stop being housekeeping and start being the product. If a chain publishes nothing today, the only way anyone will ever know what it charged in August 2026 is that somebody wrote it down in August 2026 and said so. That is the part of this we think is worth keeping.
• We have to be careful about the story. It is tempting to say chains are withdrawing prices. We can't show that yet — our own early numbers leaned on third-party guides, so some of the drop may be us checking better rather than them publishing less. We'll be able to tell after a few more monthly cycles of like-for-like checks, and we'll say which it was.

If you think that framing is wrong, we'd like to hear it: corrections@everydaypriceindex.com.

Three rules for every number

• Dated. Every price shows the month we observed it. Undated prices are guesses — including everyone else's.
• Sourced. Ranges come from chain-published prices and plan pages where they exist, and cross-checked national price-tracking publications where they don't. For hyperlocal categories like storage, where operators quote only by zip code, we show the observed national band and say plainly that no chain publishes a fixed number — rather than inventing one. When a chain hides its menu, we say so instead of faking precision.
• Refreshed. Every category is re-checked on a monthly cycle. Old data gets updated or clearly marked, never silently left to rot. Each category page now opens with a dated "what changed since the last check" note — including the chains that did not move, and the ones we could not re-verify this cycle, which are labelled as carried forward rather than quietly re-dated.

Why ranges instead of exact prices

Because exact national prices don't exist. Location, vehicle or service specifics, and week-to-week promotions move real prices constantly. A dated range tells you what's normal — which is exactly what you need to spot an unfair quote. False precision would be easier to sell and less true.

What you'll actually pay

At several chains, standing coupons are so permanent that the menu price is effectively fictional, and at others the annual fee lands weeks after the monthly rate has stopped being the number you remember. We track both — because "what it costs" should mean what an informed customer actually pays over a year, not the sticker nobody should accept.

This is the label those notes carry on every category page. Until 7 September 2026 it read "Coupon reality", which was a field name out of our own data files that had leaked onto the pages people read. It has been renamed everywhere.

Check our work — the data is yours

Methodology claims are cheap; the test is whether we'll hand you the numbers. We will. The complete dataset — every chain, every price band, every observation date, every source — is published as a free CSV and per-category JSON under CC BY 4.0. Republish it, chart it, or audit it. Get the open dataset →

And if we got something wrong, tell us: corrections@everydaypriceindex.com. We correct in public and date the correction — see corrections & contact.

Independence

We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any company we track. All trademarks belong to their owners; we reference them only to report observed pricing. If this site ever carries advertising, it will never change a number.