The State Statistics Service will start collecting prices from online stores and marketplaces to calculate the consumer price index

The State Statistics Service of Ukraine has approved the procedure for using publicly available price data from web resources for official statistics purposes. According to the Order of the State Statistics Service dated June 9, 2026, No. 148, this concerns information from online stores, marketplaces, company websites, and open price lists, which is planned to be used, in particular, for calculating the consumer price index.

The document provides for the use of modern digital tools to collect information about prices and tariffs that are publicly posted on the Internet. In fact, the State Statistics Service has received a regulatory basis for using web scraping technologies – automated collection of open information from websites and online platforms. The agency explains that the development of e-commerce and digital services requires updating approaches to statistical observations of prices.

What data can be collected

The procedure allows the use of only information that is open to an unlimited number of users. In particular, sources may include: online stores; online trading platforms; manufacturer and supplier websites; open price lists; information resources of government bodies; other web resources where prices and tariffs are published.

At the same time, the information must be accessible without authorization, registration, or special permissions.

Personal data will not be collected

The State Statistics Service emphasizes separately that the new mechanism does not provide for the collection of personal data. The procedure explicitly states that during data collection, information that allows identifying individuals or tracking their activities is not processed. Collection is limited exclusively to data on prices, tariffs, and terms of sale of goods and services that the owners of web resources have independently made public.

How web scraping will work

Data collection will be automated. At the same time, the State Statistics Service has committed to adhering to a number of restrictions: not to bypass technical limitations of websites; not to use closed or paid sources; to comply with robots.txt rules; not to create excessive load on web resources; to use a special identifier for automated requests.

It is also envisaged to obtain information directly from resource owners via API or other data exchange channels.

Why such data is needed

The main goal is to improve the quality of statistical observations of prices. After collection, the information will undergo automatic verification, cleaning from errors and duplicates, classification according to the consumer basket, and only then will it be used for statistical calculations.

Primarily, this concerns the formation of the consumer price index – one of the key indicators of inflation in Ukraine.

Note that the new procedure does not grant the State Statistics Service the right to access closed information or personal data. The legal basis for collecting open data is defined by: the Law of Ukraine "On Official Statistics"; the Law of Ukraine "On Information"; the Law of Ukraine "On Information Protection in Information and Communication Systems"; the Law of Ukraine "On Copyright and Related Rights"; the Civil Code of Ukraine.

Additionally, the document explicitly provides the obligation to respect the rights of website owners and comply with their established rules for resource use. It is also important that the State Statistics Service will use the obtained information exclusively for statistical purposes. The data cannot be used for monitoring individual companies, business inspections, or interference in pricing.

What will change for businesses and citizens

For ordinary citizens, the innovation will be practically unnoticeable. The document does not establish any additional obligations for consumers or buyers. For businesses, no new reporting or mandatory information submission to the State Statistics Service is introduced.

At the same time, companies should consider that prices openly published on their websites may be used by statistical authorities to form official inflation indicators. For the state, the main change will be the ability to more promptly obtain large volumes of price information and gradually transition to modern digital methods of statistical observation, which are already used in European Union countries.

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