Why this project
Most consumers have no idea this is happening to them.
Algorithmic pricing is one of the most meaningful shifts in consumer commerce over the last twenty years, and it’s also one of the most invisible. Prices in our lifetimes have gone from fixed tags to real-time outputs of proprietary models, and almost nobody has been told.
We started this project because the research on the topic is scattered across academic journals, regulatory filings, and news investigations that almost no regular shopper is ever going to read. Our goal was to put it all in one place, translate it out of industry-speak, and build a simulator that lets people actually feel how it works.
The site is free, ad-free, doesn’t run analytics beyond what our hosting requires, and doesn’t keep anything you do here. Which feels like a weirdly rare thing to say about a website about pricing, but there it is.
Our three commitments
What we promise
and how we try to live up to it.
Our mission
To demystify algorithmic pricing and help everyday consumers recognize when it’s happening to them. Understanding how prices get set is a basic literacy skill now, not some niche tech topic.
Our approach
Everything on this site is grounded in something real. Every claim ties back to an industry case, a regulatory filing, or research we actually read. Our sources are on the Sources page, and we try to show our reasoning instead of just asserting things.
Our audience
This project is built for college students and everyday consumers, not for researchers or lawyers. If you’ve ever clicked ‘buy’ online, you’re exactly who we made this for.
The team
Team PricePoint
Students at RIT Saunders College of Business, Spring 2026. We built every page on this site, wrote every case study, and designed the simulator together.
Team PricePoint
MGIS 130 · Spring 2026
A group of MIS students at RIT Saunders working on the intersection of data, ethics, and consumer protection. Team member names and individual roles will be added in the final submission.
If you’re reading this placeholder, it means the team is still finalizing how much personal info to put on a public project page. That’s also on-theme, honestly.