A grocery receipt gets longer. A utility bill shifts. Headlines say inflation moved, but the question at the kitchen table is smaller: what does one item actually cost, and where does the government keep that number? The records are public. The trick is knowing which page to open first.

Close-up of a home kitchen table with a folded grocery receipt, a pencil, and unopened envelopes beside a pair of resting hands in soft daylight.
The official Bureau of Labor Statistics portal houses databases, price tables, and factsheets for tracking consumer costs.

This guide walks through the Bureau of Labor Statistics pages that matter. It also says plainly what the pages we reviewed do not tell us. Those pages did not list average prices for specific items, so this article gives no price figures. It points you to where to look.

Start at the official source

The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, is published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency's CPI home page is at bls.gov/cpi. Begin there. Charts on other websites may round, reweight, or repackage the same figures, so going to the source lets you check a number against the original.

The CPI home page links to the bureau's factsheets, its data tools, and the monthly releases. Think of it as the front desk. You can start there, then move to the specific page you need.

Keep one distinction in mind. An index number tracks change over time. An average price is meant to be a dollar-and-cent figure. They are related, but the pages we reviewed do not explain exactly how, so do not treat one as a stand-in for the other.

Open the average price factsheet

The bureau has a dedicated page titled CPI: Average Price Data. It sits in the larger collection of CPI factsheets. The title tells you this is the right neighborhood for dollar averages.

We could not read the text of that factsheet. So we cannot tell you what the averages measure, how items are defined, or how often the figures are updated. Read the page itself before you quote any number from it. That is the quickest way to learn the definitions the bureau uses, and it keeps you from guessing.

Use Table 1 and the monthly release

For a monthly snapshot, open Table 1 of the CPI release. Its full title is "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): U.S. city average, by expenditure category." Two details in that title matter. It covers urban consumers. And it reports a U.S. city average, grouped by spending category.

Check the header for the release label. The version we reviewed said 2026 M09 Results. A table from a different month or year will show different numbers, so confirm the label before you compare anything.

Two companion pages carry the same release label: the CPI news release summary and the full CPI news release. The summary is shorter. The full release is the place to look for notes and detail. The sources we reviewed do not explain how to read the columns in Table 1, so look for the bureau's own notes on the page.

Pick a data tool

If a static table is not enough, go to Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject. It is the bureau's hub for finding CPI data. The tools it lists include:

  • The CPI Inflation Calculator.
  • Data Finder.
  • Series Report and Customized Tables.
  • Text Files and News Release Tables.
  • The Public Data API.

The pages we reviewed name these tools but do not say which one suits which job. They also do not explain how to find or use a series ID. So try the tool that sounds closest to your task, and read the help text on that tool's own page. If you only want a plain table, the News Release Tables option is a sensible place to begin.

Check the historical tables, and know the gaps

For older figures, the bureau publishes CPI Historical Tables for the U.S. City Average. We do not know how far back they go or which items they cover. The sources we reviewed do not say. Open the table and read its headings and footnotes before you rely on it.

One more limit is worth stating. The label in Table 1 says U.S. city average. The sources do not say whether other pages reflect national or regional prices. A single average will not match the shelf at your local store, so treat it as a benchmark rather than a prediction of your own bill.

A simple routine works. Start at the CPI home page. Read the average price factsheet. Confirm the release label on any table. Then pick one tool and stay with it long enough to learn its output. You will end up with numbers you can trace back to a federal page.