I changed my WooCommerce prices, but the shop still shows the old ones

Changing a price in WooCommerce should be simple: edit the product, change the price, click Update. When the shop keeps showing the old price, the obvious next step is to change it again, harder. That rarely helps. The price you edited is usually saved correctly. Something between WooCommerce and the customer’s screen is showing a different one.

Is this what you’re seeing?

• You’ve changed the price and clicked Update, but the product page still shows the old price.
• You see the new price, but customers, or you in a private window, still see the old one.
• The shop page shows one price, and the basket or checkout another.
• Some products changed and others didn’t, especially ones with sizes, weights or colours.
• The price on the page doesn’t match anything you can find in WooCommerce.
• You followed instructions from ChatGPT or a WooCommerce guide exactly, and nothing changed.

What usually causes it

Caching

Caching stores a ready-made copy of each page so it loads faster. Until that copy is cleared, visitors see the page as it was, old price included. There can be several layers: a caching plugin such as WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache, your host’s own cache, and Cloudflare if you use it. Logged-in users usually skip the cache, which is why you can see the new price when customers don’t. How to tell: open the product in a private browser window, or on your phone using mobile data. If that shows the old price and your logged-in view shows the new one, it’s caching.

A variable product, where each variation has its own price

If a product comes in options such as 250g and 1kg, or small, medium and large, it’s a “variable product”. The price isn’t on the product itself. It’s on each variation, under Product data → Variations. Changing one variation leaves the others alone, and the shop page shows a range worked out from all of them. How to tell: the product shows a price range like “£8.00 – £24.00”, and the Product data box says “Variable product”.

A sale price, or a scheduled one

A sale price always wins over the regular price while it’s active. A sale can also be scheduled to start or end on a date, so the price can change by itself. How to tell: check the Sale price field on the product (or on each variation), and click “Schedule” next to it to see whether there are dates set.

A plugin changing the price on the way out

Discount and dynamic-pricing plugins, wholesale or trade pricing, membership discounts and currency switchers all change the price after WooCommerce works it out. The price you typed is stored. The customer sees a different one. How to tell: the price differs depending on who’s looking: logged in or out, a member or not, a UK or overseas visitor. Look through your plugins list for anything with “pricing”, “discount”, “wholesale”, “role” or “currency” in its name.

The price is typed into the page, not pulled from WooCommerce

Page builders make it easy to type a price straight into a heading, a text box or a banner image. That text never changes when the product does. How to tell: edit the page and click on the price. If you can type over it, it’s just text. If it’s an image, the price is part of the picture.

The shop isn’t using WooCommerce for its prices at all

This is the one that catches people out. WooCommerce can be installed, with every product set up and priced, while the shop customers actually use is something else: a form with calculation fields, a booking plugin, or an embedded shop from another service. The WooCommerce products are just sitting there. Changing their prices does nothing, because nothing reads them. How to tell: see the next section.

How to tell if your shop really uses WooCommerce for prices

• Add a product to the basket on the live site and go to the basket page. If there’s no basket, or it stays empty, the shop isn’t taking orders through WooCommerce.
• Check where orders turn up. Real WooCommerce orders appear under WooCommerce → Orders. If customer orders arrive as form entries or emails instead, the shop is a form.
• Edit the shop page or a product page and look at what’s on it. A form block or a shortcode such as [forminator_form id="…"] or [gravityform id="…"] means a form plugin is doing the work.
• In the form plugin, look for calculation or price fields. If the prices are written in there, that’s where they need changing.

What you can safely try

Take a backup first. Every step here can be undone.

1. Clear every cache: your caching plugin’s “purge” or “clear all” button, your host’s cache (usually in the hosting control panel) and Cloudflare if you use it. Then check in a private window.
2. Open the product and check the Product data box. If it’s a variable product, open Variations and check the price on each one. To change them all at once, use the bulk action above the variations list (it has options to set regular and sale prices).
3. Check the Sale price field and its schedule on the product and on each variation.
4. Log out, or use a private window, and compare the price with what you see logged in. A difference points to caching or a pricing plugin.
5. In WooCommerce → Status → Tools, use “Clear transients”. WooCommerce keeps some short-lived copies of product data, and this clears them without changing your products.
6. Edit the page that shows the wrong price and click on the price to see whether it’s text, an image or a product block.

When to stop and get help

• Customers are being charged a different price from the one they saw. That needs fixing today, and checking your recent orders.
• The prices come from a form or a plugin you don’t recognise, and you’d have to rebuild it to change them.
• There are hundreds of products or variations to change, and a mistake would be expensive to undo.
• The basket and checkout show different totals and you can’t see why. Tax, shipping or a discount rule may be involved.
• You’ve followed the instructions and they don’t match what you see on your site.

A real example

The owner of a coffee importer’s online shop couldn’t update the prices in her shop. She’d already asked ChatGPT for help, showing it screenshots of her WordPress admin, where WooCommerce was installed and full of products. ChatGPT reasonably assumed WooCommerce was showing the prices and walked her through changing them, variations included. She did it all correctly. The prices on the website didn’t change.

When I looked, the WooCommerce products were real, but the shop customers used wasn’t WooCommerce at all. The previous developer had built it with Forminator, a forms plugin. The prices were worked out by calculation fields buried in the form’s settings. Nothing on the live shop read the WooCommerce prices, so changing them had no effect.

The same form explained a second puzzle. The owner expected her delivery charges to vary by weight, destination and Royal Mail service. In fact the delivery charge was a single calculation, 0.01+3.98, which came to a flat £3.99 whatever was ordered. There were no shipping rules to edit. Charging by weight and service would mean building that, not changing a setting.

The AI advice wasn’t wrong for a normal WooCommerce shop. It just couldn’t see how this one was built, and nothing in the screenshots gave it away. That’s often the difference on a site someone else built: the first job is finding out what’s really in charge of the thing you’re trying to change.

Getting it fixed

If the usual checks haven’t worked, I’ll find out where your prices really come from and either change them or show you where to. If it’s a simple price change on a working shop, a small website change is £39 for up to 30 minutes. If something’s broken or you don’t know why the prices won’t change, a WordPress repair is a fixed £119, which covers finding the problem and up to 90 minutes of fixing it. Most repairs fit in that, and you’re never charged more without agreeing first. See WooCommerce support for everything else I help shops with.

Questions

WordPress shows one price, but customers see another. Why?

Caching, if it’s a logged-in versus logged-out difference. A pricing, membership or currency plugin, if it depends on who’s looking. Tax settings, if the difference is about 20%: check whether prices are entered and displayed with or without VAT in WooCommerce → Settings → Tax.

Can I change hundreds of prices at once?

Yes, with WooCommerce’s CSV export and import, a bulk-edit plugin, or the variations bulk actions for one product’s options. Export a copy first so you can put everything back. With a lot of products, it’s worth having someone do it, because one wrong column changes every price.

The prices are hard-coded and I can’t edit them. What are my options?

Either change them where they’re really written (the form, the page text or the code), or move the prices into WooCommerce so you can manage them yourself from then on. Which is sensible depends on how the shop is built and how often your prices change.

My product pages aren’t updating at all after I make changes. Is it the same problem?

Usually, yes: it’s caching. If no change of any kind shows up, not just prices, clear every cache and check in a private window. If that doesn’t help, something is overriding the page, such as a page builder template or a custom product layout, and it’s worth having it looked at.

Is it safe to give you access to my shop?

Yes. You add me as a user with my own login, so you don’t share your password, and you can remove me when the job’s done. I take a backup before changing anything, and I’ll sign your NDA first if you’d like one.

Written by Peter Claridge, who fixes WordPress sites for businesses across the UK from Reading. Last checked on WordPress 7.1, November 2026.