India's 30-Day Prior Price Rule for E-Commerce: What Shopify Stores Should Change in Compare-At and Sale Pricing

India's 30-day prior price rule takes effect on 1 January 2027. What the gazette text says, whether it reaches your own Shopify store, and what to change in compare-at prices, strike-throughs and sale collections.

India's 30-day prior price rule comes into force on 1 January 2027. From that date, when an online store announces a price reduction, it has to show the prior price next to the reduced one, and the prior price is defined by the lowest price of the previous thirty days. For a Shopify store, that goes to the heart of how compare-at prices, strike-throughs and sale badges are used. A crossed-out price that the product never really sold at, or a sale price compared against a figure set only to make the discount look bigger, is exactly what the rule is aimed at.

In a post on 15 October we mentioned this rule while writing about compare-at prices, relying on legal commentary and saying we had not yet read the gazette text ourselves. We have now. This post sets out what the official text says, what it leaves open, whether it reaches a brand's own website, and the changes we would make to a Shopify store before January. We build software for Shopify stores; we are not lawyers. This is not legal advice, and you should check anything that affects your pricing with a lawyer who has read the rules.

What the 30-day prior price rule says

The rule is part of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs as G.S.R. 789(E), dated 9 September 2026 and published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary. We read the gazette copy published on the Department's website. The rules amend the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, and their commencement clause says they come into force on 1 January 2027.

The price provision is a new sub-rule (13) in rule 4, the rule that sets out the duties of e-commerce entities. In plain terms, it says that where an e-commerce entity or the seller announces a price reduction for any goods or services on its platform, it must indicate the prior price along with the reduced price. An explanation then defines prior price as "the lowest price of a good or service thirty days prior to the announcement of price reduction".

An illustration, with made-up numbers, of how the stricter reading works. A kurta sells at ₹1,499 through October. For one week in early November it is cut to ₹1,299, then goes back to ₹1,499. On 20 November the store announces a reduction to ₹1,199. The lowest price in the previous 30 days is ₹1,299, so on that reading ₹1,299 is the prior price to show next to ₹1,199, not ₹1,499. The reduction the store can display is ₹100, not ₹300.

That is the whole of it: two sentences. There is no list of what counts as announcing a price reduction, no formula for variants, and no special treatment for festive sales. The practical meaning will come from how stores, regulators and courts read those two sentences. Until then, the safe approach is to make your pricing defensible under the strict reading.

Does it apply to your own Shopify store?

Many D2C founders assume e-commerce rules are for marketplaces. The 2020 principal rules, which this amendment changes, say otherwise. We read them in the gazette copy hosted by PRS India.

• Scope: rule 2 applies the rules to all models of e-commerce, including marketplace and inventory models, and to all e-commerce retail, including single brand retailers and multi-channel single brand retailers.
• E-commerce entity: defined as any person who owns, operates or manages a digital or electronic facility or platform for electronic commerce, but not a seller offering goods on a marketplace.
• Inventory e-commerce entity: one that owns the inventory of goods or services and sells them directly to consumers, including single brand retailers and multi-channel single brand retailers.
• Platform: an online interface in the form of software, including a website or part of one, and applications including mobile apps.

A brand that sells its own products to consumers on its own Shopify website looks like an inventory e-commerce entity on that reading. And the prior price sub-rule names both the e-commerce entity and the seller, so a brand selling through a marketplace is also caught when it announces a reduction there. Our reading, then, is that the rule is very likely to apply to a D2C brand's own store as well as its marketplace listings. Confirm that with your lawyer for your own business structure, but we would not plan on being exempt.

What the text leaves open

Two sentences cannot answer every question a store will have. These are the ones we would put to a lawyer, with how we would act in the meantime.

• Lowest price during the 30 days, or the price on day 30? The explanation speaks of the lowest price thirty days prior to the announcement. Commentary we have read, including India Briefing's and SCC Online's, treats this as the lowest price in the preceding 30 days. That is the stricter reading, and we would plan for it.
• What counts as announcing a price reduction? The rules do not say. A strike-through compare-at price, a percentage-off badge, a Sale label on a product and a banner saying a range is reduced all plausibly do. We would treat any display that tells a shopper the price has come down as an announcement.
• Coupon codes and automatic discounts. Shopify's Help Center says automatic and code discounts are always shown with a crossed-out price at checkout. Whether a discount applied only at checkout is an announced reduction is not addressed. Ask, and in the meantime make sure the pre-discount price shown there is one you genuinely charge.
• MRP. Many Indian stores show MRP crossed out next to a lower selling price. If you have always sold below MRP, the lowest price in the last 30 days is your selling price, not MRP, and a strike-through of MRP with a percentage off may not match the rule's definition of prior price. MRP is a separate legal requirement for packaged goods. How the two interact for online displays is a question for a lawyer, not for us.
• Variants and markets. A product with sizes or colours at different prices has a prior price per variant. If you sell in other currencies through Shopify Markets, the same question arises for each market's price.

How Shopify's compare-at price works today

Shopify's Help Center page on sale pricing explains the mechanics. To show a product on sale, you set the Compare-at price field to the original price; the sale displays when the compare-at price is higher than the price. Both amounts can then appear on product and collection pages, and your theme may add a badge with a message or a percentage off. Variants whose compare-at prices are inconsistent can stop a product showing as on sale on collection pages, and the page warns that a compare-at price of zero is not the same as an empty field: to end a sale, clear the field entirely.

Two things follow for the prior price rule. First, almost every sale display on a Shopify storefront, the strike-through, the badge and the percentage, is calculated from the compare-at price. If that one number is right, most of what the shopper sees is right. Second, the help page does not describe any price history. Shopify stores the current price and the compare-at price; it does not, as far as that page describes, keep a record of what a variant sold for over the last 30 days. Under this rule, that record is yours to keep.

Eight changes to make before January

1. 1Start a daily price log now. Export Price and Compare-at price for every variant once a day, by product CSV export or a scheduled job, and keep the files. Shopify's product CSV calls these columns Price and Compare-at price. On any future date, you can then work out the lowest price of the previous 30 days for any variant.
2. 2Audit every compare-at price that is set. Filter your products for variants with a compare-at price and ask, for each, whether the product sold at that price recently. If not, clear the field or set it to a price you can show from your log.
3. 3Set a rule for what goes in the field. The simplest defensible rule is that the compare-at price, while a reduction is shown, equals the lowest price of that variant in the previous 30 days. Write it down so whoever sets prices follows it.
4. 4Stop raising prices before a sale. If you raise a price two weeks before a sale and then cut it, the stricter reading makes the prior price the lower, earlier figure. A raise-then-cut does not create a bigger discount you can show.
5. 5Plan back-to-back sales. If one sale ends and another starts within 30 days, the prior price for the second may be the first sale's price. A festive sale in November followed by an end-of-season sale in January could leave little or no reduction you can display. Plan the calendar with that in mind.
6. 6Clear compare-at prices when a sale ends. A markdown that lingers turns into a permanent strike-through. Make clearing the field part of the end-of-sale routine, and clear it rather than setting it to zero.
7. 7Check theme badges and banners. Find every place your theme or apps show a percentage off, a Sale label or an "up to" claim, and confirm each is calculated from the compare-at price, not from MRP or a hard-coded figure.
8. 8Review automated sale collections. If a smart collection includes products whose compare-at price is above their price, clearing stale compare-at prices will remove those products from it. That is correct, but check the collection still has enough products, and update any menu or banner that links to it.

The timing trap: December sets January's prior price

The rules come into force on 1 January 2027. Because the prior price looks back 30 days, the prices you charge in December are what define the prior price for a sale announced in early January. On the stricter reading, a store that discounts heavily in a December sale and then announces an end-of-season sale on 2 January may find that the lowest price of the previous 30 days is its December sale price.

That is the point of the rule, and it is not a loophole to work around. It does mean the work cannot wait until 31 December. If you want a clear, honest reduction to show in January, your December pricing and your price log both need to be in place before then.

Sale merchandising that does not depend on strike-throughs

Many stores lean on strike-throughs because they are the easiest sale signal to add. When those signals have to be accurate, it helps to have others. None of these needs a price reduction to work.

• Order the sale collection well. A sale page whose first row is in-stock products in common sizes sells better than one led by the deepest discount on a size nobody needs. Order by what is selling and available, not by discount depth alone.
• Shop by price, not by percentage. Collections by price band let shoppers find what they can afford at normal prices, with no reduction claim to substantiate.
• Edits and gift guides. A festive edit or a gifts-under collection gives shoppers a reason to browse without claiming any reduction.
• Real end dates. If a sale ends, end it on time, everywhere. A sale that never ends is the kind of display regulators look at.
• Honest stock and urgency signals. The amendment also requires e-commerce entities to comply with the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, and to conduct a yearly self-audit. False urgency belongs on that audit as much as false discounts.

For sale merchandising, SellRank handles the collection side, not the prices. It never changes a price or a compare-at price. What it does is decide the order of products in a collection from real performance and conditions such as in-stock, write that order into Shopify's own manual sort, and on the Grow plan and above let you stage a sale-season order as a draft, schedule it to go live, and have it revert automatically when the sale ends. That last part matters here: the end of a sale is when stale compare-at prices and stale sale pages tend to be forgotten, and a scheduled revert means at least the collection order does not linger. Our sale-season playbook covers the routine.

The rest of the amendment, briefly

The prior price rule is the part that touches compare-at prices, but the same amendment adds other duties for e-commerce entities in rule 4. In summary, from the gazette text:

• Display the entity's legal name, the address of its headquarters and all branches, website details, and customer care and grievance officer contacts clearly on the platform.
• The grievance officer must acknowledge a complaint within 48 hours, give the complainant a copy of the complaint as recorded, and redress it within one month.
• For imported goods, name the importer and the full country of origin.
• Become a partner in the convergence process of the National Consumer Helpline.
• Do not mislead users by manipulating search results or search indexes.
• Identify sponsored listings with clear and prominent disclosures.
• Show the seller's name on invoices in the same font size as the e-commerce entity's name.
• Comply with the 2023 dark patterns guidelines, conduct a yearly self-audit, and display a certificate to that effect prominently.

Some of these are aimed at marketplaces; others, such as the contact details, the grievance timelines and the dark patterns self-audit, read as relevant to any store that is an e-commerce entity. Our earlier post on India's DPDP Rules covers the separate data protection deadline.

A short plan from now to 1 January

1. 1This week: start the daily price log, even before you have decided anything else. It cannot be created after the fact.
2. 2Before your festive sale ends: decide your compare-at rule and write it down.
3. 3Early November: audit all set compare-at prices and clear the ones you cannot support.
4. 4November: list every sale display on the storefront, from badges and banners to sale collections and checkout discounts, and the price each one is calculated from.
5. 5November: take the open questions above, especially MRP and checkout discounts, to a lawyer.
6. 6December: plan December and January pricing together, knowing December's prices define January's prior price.
7. 7December: run the dark patterns self-audit and fix what it finds.

None of this requires a new app or a rebuilt store. It requires one honest number per variant, a record that proves it, and a routine for ending sales. If you would like help building the price log or checking your storefront's sale displays, tell us about it on our contact page. If your sale collections are leading with the wrong products, try SellRank's free plan on one collection.