Will SSD prices go down?
We will not tell you, over one to six months or over any other period. We built that answer, tested it against 1,252 past decisions, and it was wrong more often than a coin toss.
Retail pricenot publishedWhy
A shop's price is the shop's data, and showing it needs that shop's permission. No shop has approved a price feed for this site: Rakuten Product Catalog technical approval, and the separate Newegg advertiser-feed approval, neither of which has been supplied for this property. Rather than copy prices we have no right to publish, we left them out and built the parts of the job that do not need them.
Every source we use, limit or refuse, each with the reason.
The working
The five things that answer rests on
Each one is a question you would reasonably ask before trusting anybody on this subject.
1. What is actually measured today?
Category price index, not the price of a part
Computer storage device manufacturing (PPI)
80.201index level, June 2026
January 2017June 2026
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, public domain, PCU334112334112, read 2 August 2026.
That is a US government index for a whole category of goods, which we are free to keep and calculate from. It is not the price of a drive model and capacity, and it must not be read as one: a category can move while the exact part you want does not, and the other way round. The published match rating for this series against SSD is good, and it stays on the panel rather than the index being quietly treated as exact.
2. What is not measured?
0 of 10shop prices held for one exact part
A real timing answer needs the same exact part priced over and over, from a source we are allowed to keep. We hold none, because no shop has approved a feed for this site yet. Nothing on this page is loading or broken; the record simply does not exist, and it cannot be filled in backwards once it does. That is the honest difference between this page and a chart built from prices someone copied without permission.
3. Why not just call it anyway?
60.4%of our own wait calls were wrong at three months
We wrote the buy-or-wait rule and tested it against 1,252 past decisions across 11 index series, with no hindsight: every decision used only what had been published before that date. At three months, 29 of 48 wait signals were followed by a higher index. At six months, 74.5% were. A rule that is wrong more often than a coin toss is worse than useless, because people would act on it, so it is switched off in code and a test keeps it off.
The full method, every horizon, and the caveat we hold against our own result.
4. What would change this page?
Three specific thresholds, all of which have to be met: at least 10 usable prices for one exact drive model and capacity, gathered across at least 14 days, covering at least 60% of the offers we would expect to find. Any one of them failing keeps this page exactly as it is.
Note what all three passing would produce: a statement about where today's price sits against that part's own recent past. Still not a forecast. We would need a different and much higher bar before publishing one of those, and we may never clear it.
5. How complete would the data be?
Coverage is the share of the offers we would expect to find that a collection run actually matched. We report it as unavailable rather than as zero, because zero would suggest we ran a collection and found nothing. No collection has run: no source has given permission for one.
This matters more than it sounds. If a large shop drops out of a feed, the average price jumps and a naive tracker reports a rise that never happened. When collection does start, a run covering less than 60% of the comparison period suspends the answer rather than recalculating a direction from the smaller sample.
In detail
What the evidence does say about SSDs
No retained source can supply a date for cheaper retail SSDs. The current public evidence is unusually clear about storage manufacturing, however: both retained BLS storage indexes reached their highest values in the available window.
What has moved
The computer-storage-device-manufacturing producer-price index was 80.201 in June 2026. It was 8.7% above May 2026, 16.5% above its trailing 12-month mean of 68.813, and 31.5% above June 2025. June was the retained high. March through June 2026 are provisional. BLS series PCU334112334112, read from the retained file fetched 25 July 2026.
The separate commodity index for computer storage devices excluding parts was 61.175 in June 2026. It was 8.6% above May 2026, 16.8% above its trailing 12-month mean of 52.397, and 32.2% above June 2025. June was also the retained high for this series, and its March through June 2026 observations are provisional. BLS series WPU11520101, read from the retained file fetched 25 July 2026.
The agreement matters because the two indexes are separate views of storage manufacturing. It establishes a strong recent manufacturing move. It does not establish the price change for a named consumer SSD.
What the indexes leave out
Neither BLS series is a retailer feed. The files do not identify capacity, interface, controller, NAND type or revision, endurance rating, form factor, condition, merchant, stock status, or a promotion. Index points are not dollars. An index value of 80.201 cannot be read as an SSD price of $80.20. BLS definitions and source registry, reviewed 2026-07-25.
A retail comparison also has to keep products stable. A controller or NAND substitution under the same marketing name can change the product while leaving the label familiar. A valid history therefore needs the same exact drive and a declared group of sellers so a missing merchant cannot create a false movement. Product-identity and coverage methodology, published 2026-07-26.
What an earlier change looked like
The retained history shows a lower sequence across both storage indexes during 2023. PCU334112334112 moved from 64.528 in December 2022 to 63.608 in January 2023, 62.687 in April, 61.284 in June, and 60.731 in July. WPU11520101 moved from 49.033 in December 2022 to 48.326 in January 2023, 47.567 in April, 46.437 in June, and 46.012 in July. Plateaus occurred between those steps, so no single month marked the whole change. BLS PCU334112334112 and BLS WPU11520101, monthly history read 25 July 2026.
That episode is evidence about how a lower manufacturing sequence appeared in these retained series. It is not a template for the months after June 2026.
The condition to watch
Watch both official BLS series, not one. The manufacturing picture would change from a retained high to a confirmed lower sequence if each index records two successive monthly observations below its June 2026 level and later revisions preserve those observations. The checkable baselines are 80.201 for PCU334112334112 and 61.175 for WPU11520101, both for June 2026. BLS storage series, retained values read 25 July 2026.
For retail SSDs, also watch the source registry. The status changes only when an approved source begins a like-for-like price record and that price record reaches at least 14 days, 10 usable price readings, and 60% coverage. Those thresholds can support a retrospective product state, not a forecast. Price-state methodology, published 2026-07-26.
Why we do not turn that test into advice
The candidate buy-or-wait rule was tested without lookahead over 1,252 observed series-months across 11 BLS series. At the three-month horizon, 29 of 48 testable wait signals were contradicted, a 60.4% failure rate against a pre-declared 40% limit. That result is why this site gives no buy-or-wait advice. Backtest and decision, run 2026-07-26.
The honest answer is specific: storage manufacturing indexes are elevated, the retail SSD state is unavailable, and two confirmed lower readings in both BLS series are the public condition to check. None of those facts supplies a buy date.
Where next