Quick answer

This index tracks 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs at named direct US retailers, Amazon excluded. On September 14, 2026 1 of 8 tracked drives cleared every published acceptance rule, so the gate stayed closed and no index row was written. The cheapest qualifying offer was $672.98 at Adorama, Samsung 990 PRO 2TB.

Open dataset CC BY 4.0
Dataset ID
techfuelhq-ssd-price-index
Version
0.9.0
Rows
1
Format
CSV
Published
Page updated
Download CSV (1 rows) All datasets

By LK Wood IV · Published 2026-09-14 · ~4 min read · St. Louis County, MO

The short version

NAND pricing turned upward through 2026 alongside DRAM, and the $/TB figures that circulate are mostly undated deal posts. This page is a dated, checkable record: the cheapest qualifying price for eight mainstream 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives at named direct US retailers only, with the method, the acceptance rules, every rejection reason and the raw data published beside the numbers.

It is labeled a pilot because the index metric has an activation gate, and the gate status is printed here verbatim rather than worked around.

Latest capture

Latest capture, September 14, 2026 (UTC), method ssd-usd-per-tb-discovery-v1: 164 listings reviewed, 1 eligible offer, 1 of 8 tracked drives qualified; the index metric activates at 6, so the gate is closed and no index row was written. Every row carries verification_status: discovery_only and publish_ready is False: stock and exact variant are not confirmed at the retailer page.

Cheapest qualifying offer: $672.98 at Adorama (Samsung 990 PRO 2TB, 336.49 $/TB).

LineCheapest qualifying offer$/TBRetailer
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB$672.98336.49Adorama

This block is rewritten by the capture script on every run; the dated commentary below it is not.

Every qualifying observation

The file below accumulates one row per qualifying offer for each capture date. The table renders from the raw CSV at build time, so it updates the moment the data does and can never disagree with the download.

Capture Date UtcProduct LabelTitleSellerPrice UsdUsd per TbVerification Status
2026-09-14Samsung 990 PRO 2TBSamsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD with HeatsinkAdorama672.98336.49discovery_only

Rendered at build time from the raw CSV — the table and the download can never disagree.

Method, exactly

Captures run against Google Shopping (US, English) via DataForSEO’s merchant API, one exact-model query per tracked drive. An offer qualifies only if the seller matches a named direct-retailer allowlist (Best Buy, Newegg, B&H, Micro Center, Adorama, Walmart first-party, and peers — marketplace suffixes excluded), the title names the exact model line and the 2TB capacity and identifies an internal NVMe or M.2 drive, condition is new, and the USD price sits inside a sanity band. Dollars per terabyte is the price divided by two.

The index metric (median cheapest $/TB across drives) activates at six of eight qualifying drives on the same day. Below that, the observations still publish; the index row does not.

Use the data (CC BY 4.0)

Download every observation: ssd-price-observations.csv — one row per qualifying offer with capture date, drive, price, $/TB, seller and verification status. Once the gate opens, the daily series publishes at /data/ssd-price-index.csv. License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — attribute as “TechFuelHQ NVMe SSD Price Index” linking to this page.

Sizing a drive for its write life? The SSD endurance calculator turns TBW into years. For why the prices look like this, the RAM and SSD price crisis explainer is this dataset’s narrative companion, and the DDR5 RAM price index is its sibling.

Change log

  • 0.9.0 (2026-09-14) — pilot publication and first published capture. A single unpublished pilot capture from 2026-08-11 is retained in the evidence archive and is not part of the observations file.

Frequently asked questions

What does a 2TB NVMe SSD cost right now?
The latest capture block above prints the cheapest qualifying offer and its dollars per terabyte, straight from that day’s capture. It is one dated observation at one named retailer under strict rules, not a market average, and stock at the listing page is not independently confirmed. The full table beneath it shows every offer that cleared the rules on every capture date.
Why is Amazon excluded from this index?
Amazon Associates policy only permits displaying Amazon price data through Amazon’s own live mechanisms, so a dated open snapshot of Amazon prices cannot be published. Amazon listings also mix marketplace sellers with first-party stock in ways a mechanical rule cannot reliably separate. Direct retailers with named storefronts make each observation checkable.
Why 2TB, and why these eight drives?
2TB is the capacity where the $/TB curve flattens for mainstream PCIe 4.0 drives, and it is the size most builds on this site recommend. The basket holds the drives readers actually cross-shop: Samsung 990 PRO, WD_BLACK SN850X, Crucial T500, Lexar NM790, Kingston KC3000, TEAMGROUP MP44, Solidigm P44 Pro and SK hynix Platinum P41. A drive enters or leaves the basket only with a change-log entry.
How often is this captured, and what can I reuse?
Captures run daily by script, and gaps stay visible rather than filled in, because a price observation is timestamped and cannot be reconstructed later. The observations file keeps one block of rows per capture date. The gated daily median $/TB series publishes separately once six of eight drives qualify on the same day. Every capture stores the complete raw API response and every rejected offer with its reasons. CC BY 4.0, attribute to TechFuelHQ linking to this page.

Evidence ledger

Last updated
Methodology
See our methodology for research and review standards.
Update log
  • 2026-09-14 — Pilot publication. Collector ssd_price_capture.py (method ssd-usd-per-tb-discovery-v1) ran one pilot on 2026-08-11 whose evidence is retained but never published; first published capture today under the script-only daily runner (daily_price_run.py), which also appends the observations and series files this collector does not write itself.
Corrections
Spotted an error or a stale number? Email hello@techfuelhq.com. Confirmed corrections are added to the update log above.

About the author

Written by Lowell K. Wood IV, who builds and runs TechFuelHQ from St. Louis, Missouri.