Issue 1 · published 23 October 2026 · data from 30 September to 18 October 2026
Cross-border Shopping Pulse — observed interest in Amazon products
Three weeks of Amazon product pages that cross-border shoppers opened in five stores: the US, the UK, the UAE, India and Japan. The same product costs more almost everywhere outside the US. Prices move every day. Most strike-through "was" prices were never charged while we watched.
The same ASIN costs a median 1.33× its US price on Amazon UK, 1.38× in Japan, 1.49× in the UAE and 2.06× in India.
Only 21% of listings are cheaper than in the US in the UK, and 24% in Japan. In the UAE and India it is about 1 in 10 (11% and 10%). Each comparison pairs a product's median price in one store with the same ASIN's median price in the US, converted to US dollars.
Bar: median. Black line: the middle half of listings (25th to 75th percentile). Each store's comparison rests on more than 50,000 matched listings, and more than 10,000 ASINs had a price in all five stores. US prices are shown before sales tax; UK, Japanese, UAE and Indian prices include VAT or GST. Taking out the UK's standard 20% VAT would still leave the UK median above the US (about 1.11×).
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/v2/product-details/<ASIN>/UK'
Swap UK for US, AE, IN or JP. How to call it, and from which AI tools: agent.apiguru.app/llms.txt.On a typical day, about 1 US listing in 9 had a different price than the day before. Over three weeks, half of the US listings we saw on 7 or more days changed price.
For the listings that moved, the median gap between the lowest and the highest US price was 18%. The UAE moved most often: on a typical day, more than a quarter of its listings showed a new price. A little over half of all daily moves were cuts.
| Store | Changed vs the day before | Median daily move | Changed at least once (7+ days) | Median low-to-high gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | 10.8% | 6.4% | 52% | 18% |
| UK | 14.8% | 3.5% | 57% | 15% |
| UAE | 27.2% | 2.4% | 74% | 14% |
| India | 14.7% | 2.4% | 65% | 9% |
| Japan | 15.8% | 1.0% | 61% | 10% |
"Changed vs the day before": each listing's share of consecutive observed days with a different price, averaged so that every listing counts once (more than 100,000 US listings seen on two consecutive days). "7+ days": listings seen on at least 7 of the 19 days (more than 1,000 in every store). A jump to exactly 2×, 3× or 4× is usually a pack-size switch and is not counted. Leaving clothing out of the US sample changes nothing (52%, 18%).
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/v2/product-details/<ASIN>/US?fields=product_price,product_original_price'
For a job that repeats on a schedule, use an account: dash.apiguru.app/register.For about 2 in 3 US listings that show a strike-through price, we never saw that "was" price charged in three weeks. Against the highest price we did see, the median discount was 4%, not the 15% on the label.
We took listings seen on at least 7 days whose latest price showed a crossed-out list price. Most were sitting at their lowest price of the three weeks, so the deal is real against recent prices. It is a lot smaller than the label says. The UK looks the same.
| Store | Listings | Claimed discount | Discount vs 3-week high | "Was" price charged | At 3-week observed low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | > 1,000 | 15% | 4.4% | 35% | 62% |
| UK | > 1,000 | 15% | 3.8% | 33% | 57% |
Three weeks is short: a list price may have been charged before 30 September. "At the 3-week observed low" means within 0.5% of the lowest price we saw for that listing in the window.
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/v2/deals?geo=US'
All calls and their filters: agent.apiguru.app/llms.txt.One US listing in five shows a strike-through price, at a median 17% off. In India, 77% of listings sell below their M.R.P., at a median 45% below it.
Under India's Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, online listings of packaged goods must show the Maximum Retail Price (M.R.P.) printed on the pack. It is the most a seller may charge, not a recent selling price. Of the Indian listings with a strike-through that we saw on 7 or more days, only 5% were ever sold at the M.R.P. while we watched. Elsewhere, crossed-out prices are rarer: 14% of UK listings, 15% in Japan and 8% in the UAE.
Share of listings whose latest price shows a higher crossed-out price, and the median claimed discount. More than 100,000 listings per store with a price.
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/v2/product-details/<ASIN>/IN'
How to call it: agent.apiguru.app/llms.txt.A quarter of in-stock US listings (26%) carry an "Only N left in stock" warning, and more than 1 in 5 of those warnings says "Only 1 left".
The UK is slightly higher at 29%, with "Only 1 left" in a quarter of its warnings. In the US, 41% of warnings show 3 or fewer units. The median warning says 5 (UK: 4).
Latest reading of each listing that was in stock on that reading; more than 100,000 listings in each of the two stores. In-stock figures are given for the US and UK only.
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/stock/<ASIN>/US?check_inventory=true'
What the stock fields mean: agent.apiguru.app/llms.txt.46% of in-stock US listings cap a single order below the usual 30 units, and 8% cap it at 3 or fewer.
The cap is often just the stock left. When a listing shows both "Only N left" and a cap, the two are equal in 88% of cases. In the UK, 51% of listings cap an order below 30 and 11% cap it at 3 or fewer.
In-stock listings whose page offered a quantity selector, latest reading. 48% of US listings showed exactly 30, and 6% allowed more.
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/stock/<ASIN>/UK?check_inventory=true'
Full guide: agent.apiguru.app/llms-full.txt.The median number of ratings falls about 30-fold, from roughly 2,200–2,300 in the top 1,000 to 69 past rank 100,000. The median star rating stays at 4.4–4.5 in every band.
Rating counts tell listings apart and stars don't. A 4.5-star listing is typical at every rank. A listing with thousands of ratings is typical only near the top.
| US Best Sellers Rank | Median ratings | Median stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1–100 | 2,179 | 4.5 |
| 101–1,000 | 2,311 | 4.5 |
| 1,001–10,000 | 1,758 | 4.5 |
| 10,001–100,000 | 510 | 4.5 |
| 100,001+ | 69 | 4.4 |
Rank within each listing's own top-level category, latest reading; listings with at least one rating; more than 10,000 listings per band.
curl 'https://agent.apiguru.app/agent/v1/v2/best-sellers?geo=US'
Categories and pages: agent.apiguru.app/llms.txt.Method and caveats
- Window: 19 complete days, 30 September to 18 October 2026 (UTC).
- Sample: product pages that shoppers on a cross-border shopping service opened on Amazon US, UK, UAE, India and Japan, recorded as they were served. This is what cross-border shoppers look at, not a random sample of Amazon. It leans towards clothing, beauty, health and household goods. Every figure rests on more than 1,000 listings, most on more than 100,000.
- One vote per listing (store × ASIN), using its latest reading or its own median price. Listings seen on almost every day of our records (19 days or more) are left out, so a few heavily watched listings can't dominate. Including them would move most figures by less than a point. The exceptions are the 7-day price-change and "was"-price figures, mainly in the UAE, where those listings are most of the ones seen on 7 or more days.
- Prices are the prices shown on the page, in each store's currency. A price under a third or over three times the listing's own median counts as a misreading and is dropped.
- Currency: ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates of 9 October 2026 (EUR 1 = USD 1.1206 = GBP 0.84763 = INR 108.3965 = JPY 177.34). For the UAE dirham, the US-dollar peg (USD 1 = AED 3.6725).
- Stock: in-stock shares, "Only N left" and order caps are given for the US and UK only.
- Listing counts are given as lower bounds. Each figure is a median or a share of listings, with its base given next to it.