Amazon this week expanded the price history capabilities of Rufus, its agentic AI assistant for shopping, giving customers access to 30, 90, and 365 days of pricing data on products across the U.S., UK, Canada, and India. The 365-day tier is currently rolling out in the U.S., UK, and India, with full availability expected in the coming weeks, according to Amazon. The announcement, published on May 1, 2026, by Rajiv Mehta, Vice President of Conversational Shopping at Amazon, also introduced a set of additional features - including Scheduled Actions, autonomous price-alert purchasing, and cross-web shopping via Shop Direct - that extend the range of tasks Rufus can complete without direct human intervention at each step.

The price history feature and its reach

Since the feature launched in 2024, over 50 million customers have used it to check historical pricing before making purchases, according to Amazon. That figure gives a sense of scale. The average customer checks price history three times a month, a pattern Amazon says has made the tool a regular part of the shopping journey across product categories ranging from everyday household items to larger discretionary purchases.

Until now, Rufus displayed 30-day and 90-day historical pricing data. The November 2025 expansion - covered at the time by PPC Land - had already introduced 30- and 90-day views alongside price alert automation for Prime members. Today's update extends the maximum window to a full year, giving shoppers a substantially broader baseline for evaluating whether a current price represents genuine value.

Customers can reach the feature through two paths. The first is a direct link placed next to the price on any product detail page. The second is through the Rufus interface itself - accessible via the chat icon at the bottom right corner of the Amazon Shopping app on mobile, or the top navigation bar on desktop - where shoppers can ask questions such as "Has this item been on sale in the past 30 days?", "What's the price history?", or "Is this the lowest price recently?", according to the announcement.

The geographic rollout reflects a tiered structure. Price history is currently available to all customers in the U.S., UK, Canada, and India. The 365-day view, however, is limited to the U.S., UK, and India at this stage, with no confirmed date for Canada or other markets.

Scheduled Actions: recurring tasks managed by the assistant

Alongside the price history expansion, Amazon today introduced Scheduled Actions, a feature that allows customers to configure recurring or one-time shopping tasks that Rufus executes autonomously. To create one, users tap the "+" icon while chatting with Rufus. The system then handles the underlying research and either notifies the customer or adds items directly to the cart, depending on the configuration, according to Mehta's post.

The use cases Amazon describes are practical and varied: adding healthy snacks for children to a cart each month, restocking household items like pet food, paper towels, and detergent on a recurring schedule, alerting customers when a favourite author releases a new book, and surfacing gift ideas ahead of family birthdays and holidays. The customer reviews the populated cart and completes checkout. Rufus handles everything before that point.

This is not an entirely new direction for the assistant. PPC Land reported in November 2025 that Amazon had already introduced autonomous reorder functionality, allowing customers to instruct Rufus with phrases like "Reorder everything we used to make pumpkin pie" or "Order the hiking boots I browsed yesterday." Scheduled Actions formalises and extends that capability into a structured, configurable recurring framework.

Price alerts and autonomous purchasing

The autonomous purchase mechanic works through target-price inputs. Customers can ask Rufus to "Set a price alert for when this face cream is $75," "Buy these headphones when they're 30% off," or "Purchase this t-shirt when it's $15 or less," according to the announcement. Rufus monitors prices continuously and, when the target is reached, either sends an alert or completes the purchase using the customer's default payment method and shipping address.

This mechanism was partly in place before today. Amazon announced in November 2025 that auto-buy requests remained active for six months or until cancellation, with customers averaging 20% savings per purchase through the feature. Today's update appears to consolidate and surface these capabilities more explicitly within the Rufus interface, alongside the expanded price history window that gives the price-alert logic a longer reference range to evaluate against.

Shop Direct and cross-web purchasing

A third feature area announced today covers shopping outside Amazon's own catalogue. Through Shop Direct, Rufus surfaces products not currently sold on Amazon that are available through other online stores. Customers can tap to visit the merchant's store directly, or - for select items - use a "Buy For Me" button that allows Amazon to complete the purchase from the merchant's store using the customer's Amazon payment and shipping details.

PPC Land's coverage of Amazon's Q4 2025 earnings noted that products available through Buy for Me grew from 65,000 at launch to over half a million by November 2025. Today's announcement positions Shop Direct as a visible, integrated part of the Rufus interface rather than a secondary feature, placing it alongside price history and personalised deal-finding within the same assistant session.

Personalised features and the underlying data layer

Several other Rufus capabilities mentioned in the announcement speak to the personalisation layer beneath the surface. The Custom Shopping Guide function allows customers to describe a project - "What do I need to create a home photography studio?" or "What should I consider when shopping for a surfboard?" - and receive a compiled research output that incorporates their past shopping history. Photo upload functionality lets customers open Rufus, tap the "+" icon, and submit images from their camera roll to ask questions like "How do I remove this coffee stain from my rug?" or "Find dresses with this silhouette but under $100."

The easy reorder feature extends into substitution logic. A customer can ask Rufus to "Reorder everything we used to make pumpkin pie" and the system will suggest alternatives if specific items are unavailable. The "Compare with Similar" button on product detail pages triggers a side-by-side comparison generated by Rufus. A "Why you might like this" explanation on select detail pages draws on the individual's shopping preferences to explain the relevance of a product.

A persistent identity layer underlies all of these functions. Amazon's Rufus "Tell us about you" feature, which PPC Land reported on in April 2026, stores open-ended shopper descriptions - lifestyle, hobbies, household composition - and applies them across devices and across Amazon's surface area, including Alexa. That profile layer means the price history feature and Scheduled Actions operate against a backdrop of accumulated identity data, not just transaction history.

Context: Rufus growth and commercial scale

The May 2026 update lands at a point of significant scale for Rufus. Amazon's Q4 2025 financial results, published in February 2026, showed that more than 300 million customers used Rufus throughout 2025 - up from 250 million reported at the November 2025 update. The assistant generated nearly $12 billion in incremental annualised sales during the year. Monthly average users grew 149% year-over-year, and conversational interactions rose 210% over the same period.

Research published by Workflow Labs CEO Justin Leigh in April 2026 found that Rufus handled 38% of all Amazon sessions during Black Friday 2025, and that customers who engage with the assistant are 60% more likely to complete a purchase - a figure Amazon itself cited in its Q3 2025 earnings call. The same research identified that Rufus compresses the effective product discovery space from roughly 50 results to approximately five named products in a conversational response, a structural change with significant implications for how brands compete for visibility.

For advertisers and brands, the integration of Sponsored Products and Brand Prompts into Rufus - confirmed in Amazon's Q1 2026 earnings coverage - means that the same assistant surface now carries both organic and paid results. According to Amazon's Q1 2026 earnings release, nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a Brand Prompt in Rufus continue the conversation about that brand. Amazon's advertising services segment generated $17.2 billion in Q1 2026, growing 24% year-over-year. The 365-day price history window adds a new dimension to that environment: shoppers evaluating a sponsored product can now place its current price against a full year of pricing data without leaving the Rufus interface.

What the feature means for buyers and sellers

For buyers, the expanded window addresses a specific informational gap. A 30-day or 90-day view can obscure seasonal price patterns - a product that appears cheap in April may have been cheaper for most of the prior winter, or more expensive in the weeks before a major sale event. A 365-day view captures at least one full annual pricing cycle for most product categories.

For sellers, the transparency cuts in both directions. Products with stable, genuinely competitive pricing benefit from a longer reference window that validates their current price. Products that inflate before promotional events and then discount during sales may see that pattern made visible to customers in a way that 30- or 90-day windows would not always capture. The interaction between Rufus price history and the algorithmic price monitoring mechanisms that now underpin the assistant's personalisation layer adds complexity to pricing strategy on the platform.

Amazon's advertising business - and the broader Rufus ecosystem - continues to expand as the company develops the assistant's role from a question-answering tool into a layer that can autonomously complete multi-step shopping tasks on behalf of customers. The May 2026 update marks a further step in that direction, anchoring the 365-day price view as a transparency mechanism within an assistant that is simultaneously gaining more autonomous capability to act on that information.

Timeline

  • February 2024 - Amazon launches Rufus in beta, training the assistant on its product catalogue, customer reviews, community Q&As, and web data
  • July 12, 2024 - Rufus expands to all U.S. customers ahead of Prime Day 2024, with initial focus on shopping questions and product recommendations
  • November 18, 2025 - Amazon announces 50+ technical upgrades to Rufus, including account memory, 30- and 90-day price history, auto-buy for Prime members, and visual search for handwritten lists; more than 250 million customers have used Rufus by this point
  • November 18, 2025 - Amazon deploys generative and agentic AI across the shopping platform, with Rufus monthly users up 140% year-over-year and interactions up 210%
  • February 7, 2026 - Amazon Q4 2025 earnings confirm Rufus reached 300 million users and generated nearly $12 billion in incremental annualised sales during 2025; Buy for Me catalogue grows to over half a million items
  • April 17, 2026 - Workflow Labs research finds Rufus handled 38% of all Amazon sessions during Black Friday 2025 and compresses product discovery to approximately five results per conversational query
  • April 22, 2026 - Amazon Rufus "Tell us about you" feature surfaces, storing persistent shopper identity profiles - style, hobbies, household composition - applied across devices and Amazon surfaces including Alexa
  • April 29, 2026 - Amazon Q1 2026 earnings confirm Sponsored Products and Brand Prompts are live inside Rufus; advertising segment reaches $17.2 billion, up 24% year-over-year; nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a Brand Prompt continue the conversation about that brand
  • May 1, 2026 - Amazon announces expansion of Rufus price history to 365 days across U.S., UK, and India, alongside Scheduled Actions, consolidated price-alert auto-buy, Shop Direct cross-web purchasing, Custom Shopping Guides, and additional personalisation features; over 50 million customers have used the price history feature since its 2024 launch

Summary

Who: Amazon, through its Rufus agentic AI shopping assistant, led by Rajiv Mehta, Vice President of Conversational Shopping. The announcement affects customers in the U.S., UK, Canada, and India.

What: Amazon expanded Rufus price history from a 90-day maximum to a 365-day window, available on any product detail page and through the Rufus chat interface. The update also introduced Scheduled Actions for recurring shopping tasks, consolidated price-alert autonomous purchasing, Shop Direct cross-web buying, Custom Shopping Guides, and handwritten list transcription to cart. Over 50 million customers have used the price history feature since its 2024 launch, with the average user checking three times a month.

When: The announcement was published on May 1, 2026. The 365-day price history view is currently rolling out to customers in the U.S., UK, and India, with full availability expected in the coming weeks.

Where: The features are accessible through the Amazon Shopping app on mobile (via the Rufus icon in the bottom right corner) and on the Amazon desktop site (via the top navigation bar), as well as through a direct link next to the price on any product detail page.

Why: Amazon frames the 365-day price history window as a transparency measure, enabling customers to evaluate whether a current price represents genuine value against a full annual pricing cycle rather than a narrow recent window. The broader feature set - Scheduled Actions, autonomous purchasing, cross-web shopping - reflects Amazon's strategy of expanding Rufus from a query-response tool into an assistant that can complete multi-step shopping tasks autonomously, a direction consistent with the $12 billion in incremental sales the assistant generated in 2025 and the 300 million customers who used it that year.

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