Our latest price comparison reveals just how tight the race has become between the big discounters
Aldi has regained the title of cheapest supermarket after being knocked off the top spot by Lidl last month.
We compared the prices of 75 popular grocery items and found Aldi beat Lidl by just 43p – or 38p if you’re a member of Lidl’s loyalty scheme.
It comes after Lidl snatched the title from Aldi last month for the first time in 20 months.
Read on to find out where was priciest, plus how the supermarkets compared on a much bigger list of 190 products.
We checked the prices of 75 popular branded and own-brand groceries, including Hovis sliced bread, milk and cheese, at eight of the UK’s biggest supermarkets throughout August, to see how they compared.
The table shows how much our shopping cost on average:
The next cheapest was Asda, which doesn’t offer loyalty prices in the same way as the others. It cost 9% more than Aldi for our shopping list.
Meanwhile, shopping at Tesco without a loyalty card was still cheaper than shopping at Morrisons with one.
Sainsbury’s was running Nectar price promotions on 23 items on our list, and Tesco had Clubcard prices on 13. Meanwhile, Morrisons had two More scheme discounts on items in our basket, and Lidl also had two items on our list with a loyalty discount.
Waitrose also offers some loyalty prices to members, but there were none for items on our shopping list this month. It was the priciest supermarket again this month, averaging £172.61 – that’s £44.69 (35%) more than Aldi.
When we looked at a much larger selection (190 items), including more branded groceries, supermarkets’ loyalty schemes made a bigger difference.
Asda came out cheapest for this for the eighth month in a row, beating Tesco with a Clubcard by £11.03.
Tesco with a Clubcard – which had loyalty prices on 72 of the items – was the second cheapest, followed by Sainsbury’s with Nectar and Morrisons with More.
Waitrose was most expensive again, at £548.14 – 15% more than Asda.
Aldi and Lidl couldn’t be included in this comparison as they don’t stock all the branded products on the list.
You’ll pay a lot more if you stock up at Morrisons, Sainsbury’s or Tesco without a loyalty card.
For shoppers without a Nectar card, Sainsbury’s was the second most expensive after Waitrose.
Based on our smaller list of products, having a loyalty card would save an average of 0.04% at Lidl, 0.43% at Morrisons, 1.83% at Tesco and 2.87% at Sainsbury’s over the month.
For our longer list, which included more branded groceries and a wider selection of items with loyalty discounts, the savings were much more substantial – 1.37% at Morrisons, 5.63% at Tesco and 6.37% at Sainsbury’s.
The discounts offered by loyalty cards may sound good – but that’s only if you can access them. Our research has found that millions of people can’t access loyalty promotions because they’re not eligible to join supermarket member schemes due to their age, lack of address or difficulties with digital access.
We think that some supermarkets could do more to ensure certain groups of shoppers, such as those without a smartphone or those who are under 18, can access – or know how they can access – loyalty prices.
Annual grocery price inflation nudged down to 5% in the four weeks to 10 August, according to market analysis from Worldpanel by Numerator. That’s down slightly from 5.2% the month before that, which was the highest level since January 2024.
Prices are rising faster for items such as chocolate, fresh meat and coffee. They’re falling fastest for champagne and sparkling wine, dog food and sugar confectionery.
We check the prices of hundreds of grocery items at eight major supermarkets, using an independent price comparison website.
For each supermarket, we work out the average price of each item across the month, then add those up to get each one’s average total price.
Our shopping list comprises the country’s most popular and widely available groceries, based on extensive market analysis.
It includes branded items such as Cathedral City cheddar and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, as well as own-brand products such as potatoes and baked beans.
Own-brand items won’t be identical across supermarkets, but we’ve ensured everything we’ve compared is as similar as possible, based on several factors, including quality and weight.
Which? never shares the full list of products used in its analysis, as we want to avoid any attempts by supermarkets to skew the results.
We don’t want supermarkets to compete with one another to lower prices just on the items they know they will be judged on. Instead, we want retailers to work to make groceries affordable across the depth and breadth of their available lines.
We include special offers but not multibuy discounts.
We are only able to take into account loyalty prices that apply to all members of a scheme (where there’s one price on the shelf for shoppers with a loyalty card and another for those without). Currently, this type of two-tier pricing is used at Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
We are unable to include discounts that are personalised to selected members, and we can’t factor in points or other rewards, as these vary between customers and don’t always have a quantifiable monetary value.
