Skip to content
2 minute readFixedAgent-ready

Compute price stops halving every price

The default pricing function now returns a profit-maximising price that moves with your cost and demand data, instead of always recommending the bottom of the allowed range, and the elasticity function no longer raises prices when a test shows customers are price sensitive.

API reference for computing a price, describing the elasticity and unit cost inputs of the default optimizer

The default pricing function used to tell every caller to cut their price roughly in half, below cost included, whatever they sent. It now computes a real optimum.

  • lastprice/jale-optimizer returns the profit-maximising price near your current price. Send metadata.unit_cost and metadata.elasticity (from a past price test) to get a price for your market; without them it assumes typical demand, says so, and reports lower confidence
  • It never recommends a price below metadata.unit_cost unless your max_price is lower
  • lastprice/jale-elasticity now lowers the price when your A/B test shows customers are price sensitive, and raises it when they are not. It used to do the opposite
  • An A/B test whose conversion rates are not significantly different now keeps your current price instead of moving it
  • Prices with a .99 ending never leave the range you allowed
  • A new pricing eval checks recommendations against example markets with a known best price, so this class of mistake fails our tests before it ships