List Price vs Was Price: What Discount Labels Mean
A discount on a product card shows the store's own label for the earlier price, List or Was; about one in five of the listings we read carried a saving.
By Olivia HarperContributing writer.
On this page
When a product card on Wiki Shopping shows a discount, it prints three things: the current price, the percent saved, and an earlier price struck through. Next to that earlier price is a label, List or Was. The label comes from the store with the offer; Wiki Shopping does not choose it.
What the two labels mean
- List marks the list price the store sends with the offer.
- Was marks an earlier price for the product at that store.
A discount appears only when the store sends an earlier price with the offer. If no earlier price comes with it, the card shows the current price alone.
How often each label appears
We looked at the latest price reading of each Amazon listing in our price database, in the 24 hours from 1:22 PM PDT on October 22, 2026 to 1:22 PM PDT on October 23, 2026.
| What the latest reading carried | Listings |
|---|---|
| No earlier price | 32,973 |
| A List price | 6,046 |
| A Was price | 1,842 |
| A saving amount with no label | 676 |
| Total | 41,537 |
8,564 of the 41,537 listings (about 21%) carried a saving amount. Among those, the median percent saved was 15%.
How to read a discount
- A percent is relative to the label. "-15%" next to a List price is measured from the list price; next to a Was price, from an earlier price at that store. Check which label you are looking at.
- Discounts can end. Like any price, a saving can end at any time; the "as of" time under the price tells you when we read it. See how often Amazon prices change.
- Compare the price itself. Two products with the same percent off can end up at very different prices. The current price is the number to compare.
How we measured
A read-only SQL query took the most recent offer reading of each Amazon listing in the window above and counted the saving fields it carried. The exact query is kept with the Wiki Shopping project notes.