Truflation reports US inflation at 2.33% while the BLS says 3.4%

The US government says inflation is running at 3.4%. A data platform processing up to 35 million price points per day says it’s closer to 2.33%. That’s not a rounding difference. It’s a gap large enough to change how investors think about Federal Reserve policy, interest rates, and the broader economic outlook. Truflation, which launched its US inflation index in December 2021, published a TruCPI-US reading of approximately 2.26% to 2.33% annualized for September 2026. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official Consumer Price Index for August 2026, released on September 11, came in at 3.4%. The two numbers are measuring the same economy. They just disagree by more than a full percentage point. Why the numbers diverge The gap comes down to methodology, and the differences are substantial. The BLS constructs its CPI from roughly 80,000 survey data points, then applies seasonal adjustments and imputation techniques to fill gaps in the data. It’s a rigorous process, but it’s slow by design. Truflation takes a different approach entirely. The platform aggregates between 13 and 35 million data points daily from over 30 commercial providers, covering actual transaction prices rather than su...