About
About Basket Report
Basket Report Grocery Basket Price Index is the citable source for what staple groceries actually cost in the United States right now — one fixed basket, one number, charted monthly, sourced entirely from free U.S. government data.
What it is
The Grocery Basket Price Index tracks the real shelf price of 24 staple grocery items at the U.S. average, with per-item pages back to 1980 and a regional comparison. Every figure maps to a named BLS series and an ingestion date. See the full methodology.
Basket Report tracks 36 grocery and beverage price series, including a fixed 24-item Basket Index. The other twelve series are published as reference prices and have no weight in the basket calculation.
Who publishes Basket Report
BasketReport is the independent organization that publishes Basket Report and the Basket Report Grocery Basket Price Index. Data updates are generated from named U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics series and validated before publication. Methodology changes and factual corrections are documented publicly.
Contact the publisher at publisher@basketreport.com about the publication, its methodology, or editorial questions.
Methodology Data Editorial Standards Corrections Contact
What our analysis adds
BLS publishes the underlying average prices. Basket Report combines them into a fixed-quantity grocery basket and calculates how much each item contributes to the basket’s monthly dollar change. The Basket Index is our derived analysis, not an official BLS index. When a component’s latest published price is carried forward, we identify the item and its source month separately from newly published observations.
Our price histories organize monthly observations into annual tables and show inflation-adjusted comparisons. The Chart Builder lets readers create and download charts with source attribution. Calculations and price summaries are generated from the published series; the downloadable data, series IDs, and retrieval dates let readers check the results.
Data & license
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI Average Price Data, retrieved via the BLS Public Data API. BLS data is a work of the U.S. government and in the public domain. Our charts, CSV/JSON downloads, and embeds are free to use and cite — attribution to Basket Report is appreciated but not required.
Basket Report uses named U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics price series, publishes its methodology, and provides downloadable data for verification and citation.
BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.
How to cite
Basket Report, “Basket Report Grocery Basket Price Index,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI Average Price Data. basketreport.com (retrieved 2026-09-11).
Contact
Press & editorial, corrections, data/API, or general questions — see the contact page for the right address. Found an error? Email corrections@basketreport.com; fixes are logged on the corrections page.