TireIndex 2026 — what tires actually cost across US retailers

We tracked over 100,000 retailer-listed prices across TireAgent, PriorityTire, Discount Tire, and 1010tires for the same tire models. The spread is wider than most buyers realize. Here's the methodology and what the data shows.

In March 2026, Fortune profiled Matt Cortland, who used an AI voice agent to phone-call over 3,000 Irish pubs and ask the price of a Guinness pint. The result — the Guinndex — turned out to be the kind of price transparency that consumers had quietly wanted for years. Medians were €5.50. The most expensive pint was €11. Pubs 100 yards apart sometimes charged €2 different prices for the same product. At least one publican lowered prices after the data went public.

The same product, sold at sharply different prices across the market, with no easy way for the consumer to compare — that's not specific to Irish pubs. It's true for new tires sold by US online retailers. The data we've been quietly accumulating shows that a single tire model can be 30%, 50%, or sometimes more than 100% more expensive at one retailer than another, in the same week, for what amounts to the same product. We built the TireIndex to surface that gap.

What the TireIndex tracks

We snapshot the listed price for every tire model on every retailer we have ingested into our catalog. The current tracked retailers are TireAgent, PriorityTire, Discount Tire, and 1010tires, with TireRack, TireBuyer, SimpleTire, and Tires Easy in active rollout. Each daily snapshot stores the retailer, the URL, the listed price in cents, the size (when the retailer exposes it), and the date captured. That gives us a real time series — not just "the price today" but the trend over the days and weeks since we started tracking.

Per tire model, the index page shows four headline numbers: the median listed price across retailers, the cheapest retailer's listing, the most expensive retailer's listing, and the spread between them as a percentage. The spread is the most under-appreciated number on the page. A 90% spread between Retailer A's lowest listing and Retailer B's lowest listing for the same tire model means a buyer who doesn't compare is leaving substantial money on the table.

Five things the data shows

1. Tireagent's median listing is roughly 2.5× higher than Discount Tire's. Across every tire we track, the median listed price at TireAgent is about $430 — versus roughly $129 at Discount Tire. Some of that is mix (TireAgent stocks more premium and performance-oriented brands), but a large fraction is the retailer's pricing posture. A buyer who defaults to one retailer without comparing is making a real economic choice, often without knowing it.

2. The biggest cross-retailer spreads are not on obscure tires. The widest current spreads include well-known consumer models — winter tires from Yokohama, all-season touring tires from Pirelli, Goodyear long-mileage tires. These are tires consumers actively search for. The spread is wide because retailers position the same tire differently — some as a budget option, some as a premium one — and rely on consumers not comparing.

3. The "online retailer is always cheapest" intuition is wrong. Across categories, Discount Tire — primarily a physical retailer with online pricing — has the lowest median listing in our data. Online-only retailers like TireAgent and PriorityTire show median prices noticeably above the physical-retailer pricing.

4. Spread is bigger on winter and performance tires than on all-season. The biggest single spread in our current data is 609% on a winter tire ($84 to $597 across retailers). All-season touring tires, which dominate sales volume, show tighter cross-retailer pricing because retailers compete more aggressively on the high-volume SKUs.

5. Listed price is not installed price. All of the above is the price for the tire itself. Installation, mounting, balancing, valve stems, and disposal fees are separate and vary by shop. Buyers comparing across retailers also need to factor in installed cost — see our install cost calculator.

The methodology, in detail

For each tire model, we collect every retailer listing we can find — the brand-and-model on the retailer's catalog page, the URL, the listed price, and the size when exposed. We dedupe to one row per (retailer, URL) and write that to our retailer_listings table. Each day, we project the latest retailer_listings state into a separate price_snapshots table with a date stamp. That's what gives us the time series — the latest-state table overwrites, but the snapshot table accumulates.

The per-tire median we show on each index page is the median across retailers, not across listings. Within a retailer, the same tire model often appears in multiple sizes (a 235/40R18 and a 285/30R20 are both the same model but different products), so we collapse each retailer to its cheapest current listing for the model. That gives a like-for-like cross-retailer comparison: each row is one retailer's cheapest current offering for that model, and the median across those rows is the headline number.

The spread is then the percentage difference between the cheapest and most-expensive retailer's lowest listing. If retailer A's cheapest listing for the Michelin Pilot Sport 5 is $250 and retailer B's cheapest is $325, the spread is 30%. This number stands on its own as a "is shopping around worth it" signal.

What this index does not capture

The TireIndex compares listed prices for the same tire model. It does not compare the same exact SKU (down to the size) across retailers — that's possible for specific size searches, but the cross-retailer SKU overlap on any given size is much smaller than the model-level overlap. We surface model-level data because that's where the visible spread lives and where the buyer's comparison naturally starts.

The index does not include local installers, regional dealerships, or independent shops. National retailers post prices online; the corner shop generally doesn't. This is the obvious next phase of the TireIndex — Cortland's Guinndex worked precisely because he called every pub, not just the chains. The same approach (voice-agent calls to local installers asking for an installed-price quote on a specific tire and vehicle) could close the gap for tires, and we expect to publish that data later in 2026.

How to use the TireIndex when buying tires

Start at the tire's index page (for example, the Michelin Pilot Sport 5 price index if that's a tire you're considering). Note the median across retailers — that's the rough fair-market number. Note the spread — if it's above 20%, comparing retailers is meaningful; above 50%, it's the most important step of your purchase. Click through to the cheapest retailer for the model.

For installed cost, use our install cost calculator — it factors in mounting, balancing, TPMS, and disposal fees by state. The retailer's listed price plus the installer's labor is the actual out-the-door number.

Finally — and this is the boring but important step — confirm the size, load rating, and speed rating match your vehicle's placard before purchase. The index aggregates by model, but only one size of any model will fit your vehicle. Our sidewall guide walks through what to verify.

By Mark Bishop · Updated 2026-05-18.