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Which one sounds more natural: agree to a price or agree at a price? Here's some examples:

We agreed at/to the price with the customer, but then he changed his mind.
I offered $1000 for the car and she agreed to/at that.
We agreed at/to $100 for the job.

I have heard both used with the word "agree" but can't figure out which one is more correct and natural.

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    In this context, "agree" collocates well with "on" and "to", maybe with "about". I've never heard it used with "at". I can think of "arrive at" but not sure how well it fits here.
    – Andrew
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 21:57
  • 2
    Have you tried using Google Ngrams? "agree at" is hardly used
    – Barmar
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 15:10
  • Agree to; The other sounds hokey.
    – copper.hat
    Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 7:56

2 Answers 2

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I would recommend the following three:

  • "We agreed on the price with the customer, but then he changed his mind."
  • "I offered $1000 for the car and she agreed to that."
  • "We agreed on $100 for the job."

In the first and third cases, the word "to" could be used instead of "on", but it would just sound more awkward, especially for the first sentence (and not as much for the third sentence).

In all three of these cases, using the word "at" as you suggested, would make the sentence sound a lot more awkward. The phrase "agree at a price" seems to imply to me that there was some back-and-forth bargaining that ended at some final value, and in that case the sentence would look like this (for example):

"After several hours of back-and-forth negotiation, we agreed at the final price of $100".

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"agree on a price" is idiomatic in the US.

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    Welcome to English Language Learners! While this may be correct, we like our answers to be backed up by references. You can edit your answer to include one. See the Help Center article How to Answer.
    – Glorfindel ♦
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 16:01
  • @Glorfindel Why the note about references on this answer, but not the previous above? Is it strictly because they explained further, even without references? (pure curiosity)
    – TCooper
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 22:29
  • @TCooper he might have used a script to write that comment, which means it's a somewhat generic message for answers that lack detail. Usually a one-line answer like this should be a comment, but it's a new user so they're being given some help. This is all just my guess!
    – Nike Dattani
    Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 3:01
  • @TCooper Not only does this answer not need a citation due to its brevity and clarity (easy for people to downvote if it were wrong), but this forum doesn't officially encourage citations (see the answer guidelines linked above).
    – piojo
    Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 4:19
  • @TCooper Nike Dattani is correct, it's my variation on one of the Share Feedback options in the First Answers review queue and I'm using AutoReviewComments. New users often don't know the rules/expectations of Stack Exchange, so it's our duty to educate them. Note that I'm not saying the answer is wrong or should be deleted, just that it can be improved by adding a reference. This holds for the other answer as well, and I do write answers without references as well. But they'll always be more than just one-liners.
    – Glorfindel ♦
    Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 7:49

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