There are a number of private organisations that measure inflation beyond Truflation, like Price Stats or Adobe Digital Prices which reflects a broader shift in economics, away from relying solely on official monthly / quarterly data towards “big data, real time” economics They provide an early warning of inflation surges or deflation, which is useful in volatile times.
For central banks or policymakers, these alternative indices are helpful as complements and eventually as replacements to traditional measures. For businesses, investors, or households, these indices help anticipate where price pressure is building (or receding) sooner than official data, enabling proactive decisions (e.g. hedging, pricing adjustments, inflation-linked strategies).
The key differences between Truflation, Price Stats and Adobe Digital prices are:
| Truflation | PriceStats | Adobe Digital Price Index |
|---|
Data frequency / latency | Daily (real-time) updates. | Daily price scraping; indices published with small lag (e.g. 3-day lag) | Monthly (data aggregated from daily retail, but reported monthly) using product matches. |
Scope (basket) | Broad consumption basket of market price data from 30+ data sources in the US with more than 15M items of goods and services that includes housing. | Consumer goods (retail products) sold by participating retailers which are primarily retail goods, not necessarily entire services or housing. | Online retail goods across 18 categories with offline purchases, services and many non retail goods excluded. |
Weighting / aggregation method | Uses weights that reflect the broader consumption patterns and is updated annually. | Uses BLS CPI style weights where possible; calculates price changes using matched goods with no quality adjustments). | Uses Fisher price index, matched products, weighted by actual quantities purchased month to month. |
Type of prices tracked | Broad consumption of goods (new and used), housing (owned and rented) and services. | Retail goods sold by selected retailers (mainly physical and online retail) — generally excludes services, housing, | Online retail goods only; excludes offline purchases, many services, and non-retail consumption. |
The strategic benefits of each of the three services:
Truflation: Provides you with the most comprehensive, real time look at inflation or cost of living. This is because of its daily updates and its broad basket coverage, Truflation is above to capture inflationary pressures that standard indexes miss, especially in volatile environments.
Price Stats: Provides you with high frequency monitoring of retail inflation trends, because of its daily scraping of large amounts of retail-price data. PriceStats observes inflation shifts almost in real time, Given PriceStats largely reflects retail goods sold by a subset of (mostly large) retailers, it may underrepresent services, housing, small/local shops, and non-retail consumption, which are all important parts of a typical consumer basket.
Adobe DPI: Its a comprehensive understanding of online retail prices. It is useful for tracking deflation or inflation in the online retail space - often a leading indicator for broader retail price trends but only captures online retail goods and excludes offline purchases, many services, housing, and non-retail consumption. So it can’t serve as a full “cost-of-living” or macro inflation index on its own.