What is Instacart Clementine?

Clementine is Instacart's AI shopping assistant, launched on 9 September 2026. It takes a plain-language request, a recipe or a photo of a shopping list and builds a grocery cart from items available at your chosen store. It applies dietary preferences such as gluten-free or vegetarian across the whole cart.

Where is Clementine in the Instacart app?

On phones, tap the Clementine icon at the top right of the Instacart app, directly above the search bar. On the website, it sits at the top of the left-hand navigation. If it is missing, update the app and reopen it, since the feature is being enabled account by account.

Is Clementine free to use?

Yes. Clementine is built into the standard Instacart app and website at no extra charge, and it does not require an Instacart+ membership. You still pay the normal order costs, including delivery and service fees where they apply.

Which countries can use Clementine?

Clementine is available in the United States and Canada at launch. Instacart has not announced a date for any other country, and the assistant relies on its North American store network of roughly 100,000 locations, so wider availability would need that network to expand first.

Can Clementine read a handwritten shopping list?

Yes. You can upload a photo of a handwritten or printed list and the assistant converts the lines into matched products you can add to the cart. Check the results before checkout, as matching and quantities are the most common places these assistants get things wrong.

Instacart Clementine AI Assistant Live in US and Canada

Where to find it

There is no separate download. On phones, the Clementine icon sits at the top right of the Instacart app, just above the search bar. On desktop, it is pinned to the top of the left-hand navigation column. If you do not see it yet, force-close the app and reopen it, or update Instacart from the Play Store or App Store — the assistant is being switched on account by account rather than shipping in one build.

What it actually does

The pitch is cart-building rather than chat. You describe what you need in ordinary language and the assistant assembles the items, checks them against whichever store you are shopping, and drops them into the cart for you to edit.

Plain-language requests — asking for a week of budget-friendly kids' lunches or high-protein dinners for two returns a cart, not a wall of text.
Photo lists — point the camera at a handwritten or printed shopping list and it converts the lines into matched products.
Recipes — it can generate a recipe and then add the ingredients, or work from one you supply.
Dietary filters — gluten-free, vegetarian, nut-free and organic preferences carry across the whole cart rather than needing to be applied item by item.
Reorders — "order my usuals" pulls from your own past baskets.
Deals — it surfaces current promotions and flags cheaper substitutes when a budget is named.

The data behind the suggestions

Instacart says the assistant draws on 1.6 billion lifetime orders and a catalogue of more than 2 billion items, refreshed by over 10 million inventory signals a day from close to 100,000 stores across more than 2,200 retail banners in North America. That inventory layer is the part that matters day to day: it is what should stop the assistant from building a cart around something the store nearest you does not have on the shelf.

The company also says orders placed through Clementine run above its average basket size, which it puts at roughly $115. That is a revenue argument as much as a shopping one, and it is worth keeping in mind when the assistant offers to round a cart out.

Retailers get their own version

Alongside the consumer launch, Instacart introduced Cart Assistant, a white-label version that supermarket chains can run inside their own apps and websites under their own branding, tone and loyalty programme. It is already live with Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman's, with ALDI US, Harmons, The Save Mart Companies and Stew Leonard's named as coming later. In practice that means you may meet the same underlying assistant under a different name on a grocer's own app.

What is not clear yet

Instacart has not said when Clementine reaches markets outside the US and Canada, and there is no published timetable. Nor has the company detailed how long the assistant retains your prompts and uploaded list photos, or whether those are used for training. If that matters to you, it is worth reviewing what you upload — a photographed list can carry more than groceries.

The wider context is a race between delivery apps to become the app you open before dinner rather than after you have decided. Uber Eats and DoorDash have both shipped assistants of their own, and the same pattern is playing out in general-purpose apps too, from Meta's Muse agent to the steady stream of consumer updates in ChatGPT. If you are weighing up which of these is worth keeping on your home screen, our roundup of the best AI apps for iPhone is a useful starting point.

Trying it without handing over the whole shop

The low-risk way in is a small, specific request — one meal, one budget — and then reading the cart line by line before checkout. Quantities are where these assistants tend to go wrong: a recipe for four can quietly become four packets of an ingredient you already have. Substitutions are the other thing to check, since the assistant picks them for you when stock runs short.