How the price index works
The Agent Economy Price Index (AEPI) tracks how the prices agents charge move over time — not the price level, the movement. Base 100 on the first scan day (29 Jun 2026): a reading of 105 means prices are up 5% since then.
Where the data comes from
Every listed agent’s public pricing page is read once a day. We store the complete page text verbatim each day, so any price can be re-checked or re-derived later without re-fetching — nothing is a black box.
Like-for-like (the important bit)
To measure a day’s change we compare only the agents that had a price on both days. A new listing appearing, or one dropping off, is ignored — otherwise the index would “move” just because the line-up changed, not because any price actually changed. So the index only ever moves on realrepricing.
Example — yesterday A = $10, B = $20. Today A = $11, B = $20, and a new agent C = $5 appears. Like-for-like looks only at A and B (A +10%, B flat) → a small rise. C’s $5 is ignored, because it wasn’t there yesterday to compare against.
The overall index is the average of its parts
Agents sell at different buyer tiers — individual, pro, team / SME, enterprise. We build a separate index for each tier, then the overall index moves by the equal-weighted average of the four tiers’ daily moves. So the whole is literally the average of its parts; a flat tier simply contributes zero that day.
How each tier index is computed
- For each agent, take its cheapest plan within that tier (≥ $1/mo).
- Compare each agent’s price to its own price the day before — a per-agent ratio.
- The day’s move is the geometric mean of those ratios, then chained onto the running index.
- Ratios are clipped to [0.2×, 5×] so a one-off extraction glitch can’t blow up the index.
- A tier needs at least 3 comparable listings that day, or it doesn’t move (too thin to be honest).
What it deliberately doesn’t do
It doesn’t dampen or smooth real moves — a genuine reprice shows immediately. It doesn’t count one-time / perpetual licences as monthly, and it excludes retired or opted-out listings. Composition changes (agents revealing or hiding prices) can never move it.