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Can AI tools read UK suppliers' prices?
We checked 33.
We ran Kavel's free AI pricing check on the homepages of 51 UK fastener, fixing and bearing suppliers on 24 October 2026. Most do not put a product price in the page's HTML.
What we found
Of the 51 sites, 36 answered and 15 did not (7 refused our request with a 403 and 8 could not be reached). Three of the 36 turned our checker away with a bot check, so we read 33. Of those 33:
| What the page showed | Sites |
|---|---|
| Product prices in the page's HTML | 7 |
| One promotional price only | 1 |
| No prices on the page we read | 16 |
| Prices added only by JavaScript | 5 |
| "Contact us" or ask for a price | 4 |
On robots.txt, 2 of the 36 (Grampian Fasteners and Leader Hydraulics) ask all 14 AI crawlers we check to stay out. The other 34 block none. For most suppliers the question is not whether crawlers are blocked. It is whether there is a price on the page for them to read.
What this means
A tool that reads a page's HTML without running JavaScript can only report prices that are in that HTML. Prices that appear only after a script runs, or only after a trade customer logs in, are invisible to it. That is a normal choice for many trade suppliers. It is worth knowing it is a choice, because buyers are starting to use AI assistants to find suppliers and ask for quotes, and a quote request is easier to answer well when the supplier's own prices are easy to find.
How we checked
- We used the free AI pricing check. It reads the page's HTML the way a tool that does not run JavaScript would, looks for prices, and checks robots.txt for that page.
- It reads the page it is given, here each homepage, and follows a link to a pricing page if the homepage has one.
- It ignores empty basket totals, delivery charges and free-delivery or minimum-order thresholds. The first version of the check did not, and counted
£0.00baskets as prices. We fixed that before publishing these numbers, then read the contexts of the sites with prices by hand.
What this does not show
- Homepage only. Many suppliers show prices on product or category pages, or only to logged-in trade customers. "No prices on the page we read" does not mean no prices anywhere.
- Sites that turned us away. The 3 bot-check sites and the 15 we could not read are left out. A site that refuses our checker may show prices to a normal browser.
- Not a sample. We picked these 51 suppliers. They are not a statistical sample of UK suppliers.
- Not how any AI behaves. This is what the page's HTML contains. It does not test ChatGPT, Claude or any other assistant.
Checked 24 October 2026 with Kavel's AI pricing check. Written with AI from the checker's results and checked by a person. We have not named the individual suppliers, apart from the two that block all 14 crawlers, which is public in their robots.txt.