Street price vs MSRP: which one matters

There are two kinds of “regular price” on most things you buy.

MSRP is the manufacturer’s suggested retail price: the number the maker prints, sometimes called the list price. The street price is what stores actually sell it for, week to week. They’re often far apart, and the gap is where a lot of big-looking discounts come from.

What the rules say

The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing cover this directly. Section 233.3 says that “only in the rare case are all sales of an article at the manufacturer’s suggested retail or list price.” It warns that a list price that’s “significantly in excess of the highest price at which substantial sales in the trade area are made” can mislead shoppers when it’s used as the comparison.

Section 233.1 says the same about a store’s own “was” price: it should be a price the item was really offered at, openly and in good faith, “for a reasonably substantial period of time.”

In plain terms: the number being cut should be a number people actually paid.

Example: a comparison price nobody paid

The Acer Swift Go 16 is $649.99 at Best Buy. Best Buy shows a “comp value” of $1,149.99. Against that, $649.99 is 43% off.

Here’s the street price. This configuration sold for $799.99 on Jun 19, Jun 29, Jul 20 and Aug 3, 2026, and for $749.99 on Sep 12, 21 and 22. We haven’t seen it sell at $1,149.99. So the honest saving is $100 against September and $150 against the summer price. That’s still a good deal, and it gets an A, but for being the lowest price we’ve tracked, not for the 43%.

Example: a list price far above the street

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G7 32” carried a $1,099.99 “was” price. The public prices we tracked for it came down from July to October 2026, and none came anywhere near $1,099.99.

At B&H it was $699.99. When we checked on Oct 27, 2026, B&H was also applying a $200 coupon in the cart, which would have brought it to $499.99, but we grade on the shown price. $699.99 matched the lowest public price we’d tracked, and that’s why it got a B. The $1,099.99 wasn’t part of the math. The deal ended on Oct 27, 2026.

How to use this

1. Find the street price: the prices on the deal page’s history, not the crossed-out one.
2. Compare today’s price to the lowest recent street price.
3. Treat MSRP as the ceiling, not the starting point. Most things sell under it most of the time.

That’s how we grade. A sale can only earn credit for beating what the item really sells for. More on that in a percent-off tag is not a grade and how to read a price history.