Do you feel like you’re spending too much on food but not sure how to compare grocery prices? Let me show you how to get the best deals!

Long before I learned how to easily compare grocery prices I was trying to stick to a budget. Sticking to a budget is hard, though, when you’re not really sure if you’re buying the cheapest item or not! I would find myself staring at a shelf of different products, brands, and sizes trying to figure out which was the best deal. After I stared long enough to become self conscience I would usually throw a moderately priced package into my cart and call it good without really knowing if I had over-spent or not.

How to Compare Grocery Prices Online:

Let’s use chocolate chips at Walmart for example. If you search for Great Value semi sweet chocolate chips on the Walmart app, you’ll find there’s a 36oz bag, a 24oz bag, and a 12oz bag. The 12oz bag is currently on Rollback so the price is slashed. Because this is the smallest bag and the only bag on sale it’s easy to assume this must be the cheapest option, but it’s not! Under the price of each product is the price per ounce. The price per ounce for the 36oz bag is 15.3¢/oz, the 24oz bag is 17.7¢/oz and the 12oz bag (even on sale) is 16.4¢/oz.

This means the cheapest bag of Great Value semi sweet chocolate chips is the 36oz bag. You will likely be able to use 36oz of chocolate chips before they go bad (about 2 years) so you should buy the bigger bag. While it’s not a huge savings, learning to compare grocery prices on all the foods you normally shop for can really add up!

How to Compare Grocery Prices at the Store:

Let’s use the same chocolate chips again here. Looking at the photo below you can see that there’s another price next to the main price sticker. This is the same price per ounce that we just looked at above! The 12oz bag is listed as a Rollback product but is still 16.4¢/oz.

Is Buying in Bulk Always Cheaper?

Often times buying in bulk is cheaper per unit, but that’s not always the case. I recently found that the Great Value Instant White Rice is slightly cheaper when you buy the smaller box. For a 28oz container, the rice cost 10.3¢/oz while the 42oz container cost 10.4¢/oz. Again, this is a marginal difference but it does show that it’s important to not assume but to actually compare grocery prices when you’re shopping instead to find the best deal.

Shelf Life of Bulk Items:

While bulk items are usually cheaper per unit, it’s important to take shelf life of the item into consideration when purchasing to make sure that you’re actually getting a good deal and not wasting money. For example, if you find that a large tub of cottage cheese is cheaper per ounce than a smaller container but you only use cottage cheese for 1 recipe per month then you’ll likely end up letting the leftover cottage cheese go bad. If you throw away any of the product, you’re likely not saving any money. You would have been better off buying the smaller container.

Storage of Bulk Items:

Sometimes the price difference per unit of a bulk item is minimal but the size difference of the product is huge. For example, it’s cheaper per ounce to buy a 25# bag of flour than it is to buy a 1# bag of flour. You could save a good amount of money in the long run if you use a lot of flour but if you don’t have the space or proper airtight storage for these products then you’ll be annoyed and how little room you have in your pantry for any other products.

Comparing Grocery Prices on Sale Items:

Usually the generic off-brand version of products is cheaper than the name brand version, however, sales can occasionally drop the price of name brand items to lower prices than the generic version. When a product is on sale, a store usually will not update the cost/ounce in the aisle so you’ll need to get your phone calculator out to do the math yourself!

Calculating Cost per Unit by Hand:

To calculate cost per unit of an item you’ll need to take the cost of the item divided by the number of ounces in the item. As a reminder, there are 16oz in 1#. This means that if a bag of flour is 5#, it hold 80oz of flour (5 x 16).

Comparing Price of Sale Items by Hand:

Let’s say the 36oz bag of Toll House chocolate chips goes on sale for $2.50 off. The regular price is $7.48 (20.8¢) so $2 off of that is $4.98. We want to find out the cost per ounce of the new price to compare it to the generic price.

$4.98 ÷ 36 = 0.138

Now you’ve found that the sale price Toll House chocolate chips is 13.8¢/oz.

The cheapest Great Value chocolate chips we used as an example earlier was 15.3¢/oz (also a 36oz bag). Now we can see that the sale price of the Toll House chocolate chips is cheaper even the generic chocolate chips! In this case it would make sense to buy the name brand item.

Comparing Prices Across Stores:

Now you know how to compare prices of different sized packages and brands but how do you figure out which store has the cheapest groceries? Typically Walmart, Aldi, or Sam’s Club have the cheapest generic brand groceries but sometimes sales at other stores like Hy-Vee or Kroger can beat out the generic brand prices like we mentioned above.

It can be overwhelming to try to keep up prices at all the stores but remember that you only have to look up the prices of the items your family normally uses. Don’t worry about that great price of pesto if you don’t have any recipes that use it!

I’ve found the best way to compare prices is to compare back to Walmart Great Value brand because this is most often the cheapest price. If I see in a Hy-Vee ad that yogurt is on sale, and I need yogurt I’ll look up the price of yogurt on the Walmart app. If the Hy-Vee price is less than the Walmart price I’ll go to Hy-Vee instead. Over time you’ll have researched so often that you’ll remember the prices of your staples foods and won’t have to look them up anymore!

How to Know What’s on Sale:

Walmart doesn’t run sales outside of their clearance and Rollback priced items so you don’t have to worry about their prices changing each week. Most other stores run a weekly ad that you can find on their individual websites or you can use an app like Flipp to find all the ads in one place.

Most stores also have their ads in paper print at the front door but I prefer to do my research at home prior to leaving the house. Some towns also have a free newspaper with weekly ads inserted that you could get delivered to your home! Don’t forget to keep track of what day of the week new ads come out. In my area Hy-Vee ads start on Mondays and Aldi starts on Wednesdays

In Summary:

The best way to compare grocery prices to ensure you’re getting the best deal is to look at the cost per unit. Buying in bulk is usually cheaper but storage space and shelf life are considerations to keep in mind. Generic off brand items are usually cheaper than name brand items, however, sometimes sales on name brand items can bring the cost per unit down to at or below the cost of the generic item.