What’s Actually Happening at Checkout

Forter’s network has seen steady growth in agentic orders throughout the summer. From August to September, there was 24% month-over-month growth — or 48% if we include Instinct and Grok Bot, whose first orders we detected on September 1.

Then Meta launched Muse.

We began detecting Muse orders on September 21. That week, agentic orders were up 229% month-over-month.

Read on to learn more about the AI agent order data from our network.

Last updated: October 1, 2026 

The methodology of our AI agent order data

This content is based on agentic commerce data from Forter’s network, spanning August 1 to September 27. Here is a quick guide on how to read the data:

• Agentic orders refer to orders placed through an AI agent: OpenAI (ACP or ChatGPT Instant Checkout), Google (UCP or Gemini), Muse, Instinct and Grok Bot. “All agents” counts each agentic order once.
• Detection dates are the dates we started detecting agents reliably, which may be later than the dates they actually started placing orders. Instinct and Grok Bot first appeared on September 1. Muse was first detected on September 21.

How agentic orders have accelerated since the launch of Muse

Throughout August, OpenAI placed 82% to 93% of agentic orders every week. The introduction of new agents reduced OpenAI’s dominance in September. During its first week of detection, Muse accounted for nearly half of agentic orders.

Growth has been so fast that within eight days, Muse placed two-thirds of the agentic orders we saw during the previous month.

However, Muse’s growth has been additive, rather than coming at the expense of other agents. 

Since its launch, all agentic orders are now 4.4x their early August level. OpenAI, in particular, grew 27% MoM.

The gap between Muse and OpenAI narrows when you factor in basket size. There are 14 percentage points between the two agents’ share of orders. But there are only 8 percentage points between their share of spend.

Comparing the basket sizes of AI agents vs. human shoppers

Agentic orders are heavily concentrated in North America. The Google and OpenAI pilots are US-only, while Muse is limited to the US and Canada. To keep the comparisons fair, we removed the effect of agents making shopping decisions based on price alone. In this section, AI agent order data was measured against the average human shopper at the same retailers.

Overall, agents spend 14% less per order than humans. Google skews the numbers significantly as it only supports a single-item checkout. Without UCP and Gemini, agents would spend slightly more than humans on average.

Google’s smaller orders suggest single-item or repeat purchases. This is atypical for agents, which are largely used for more considered purchases. In the chart below, “all other orders” refers to those made by other agents, such as Perplexity’s Comet, and human shoppers.

Only 26% of agentic orders are $50 or less. Purchases between $50 and $200 are the sweet spot for OpenAI, Muse, Instinct, and Grok Bot. Instinct has the largest share of orders over $500, with 13%. 

Our agentic AI order data shows OpenAI dominating the shipped retail categories: apparel, beauty, sporting goods, and consumer electronics. Muse, Instinct, and Grok Bot are more likely to be used where checkout is more complicated. The three screen-scraping agents place more orders in tickets, travel, and digital services, where there is no shipping address.

Take control of your agentic checkout 

The right customer experience and ease of access to the agentic commerce will drive a step change very quickly. Merchants must prepare before the tidal wave, not rush to fix after it arrives.

Forter helps merchants both protect themselves from automated fraud and promote a seamless customer experience with headless checkout. 

Contact [email protected] to start now.