Which was the cheapest supermarket in January 2023?
Aldi was the cheapest supermarket in January 2023, according to the latest monthly analysis from Which?.
Meanwhile, the most expensive supermarket was almost £26 pricier than Aldi for an equivalent basket of groceries.
Read on to find out more about how your supermarket’s prices compare in our analysis.
Cheapest supermarket for a basket of groceries
Which? checked the price of 45 popular grocery items every day in January at some of the UK's biggest supermarkets to see how they compare.
The products in our basket included own-brand cottage pie and PG Tips tea bags.
The chart below shows how much the basket cost on average:
Aldi’s basket was the cheapest overall in January 2023, with our shop costing £82.03, on average, beating rival discounter Lidl by £2.04.
The same shop at Waitrose was £107.71, on average, making it £25.68 pricier than Aldi.
Of the 'big four' supermarkets, Tesco was the cheapest at £93.80.
There was just a 33p difference between Asda (£95.32), which was fourth cheapest in January, and the next cheapest supermarket Sainsbury’s (£95.65).
However, price is just one element to consider when you're deciding which supermarket you shop at. We also survey shoppers on their experiences when it comes to customer service, store experience, product quality, online deliveries and a range of other factors, to find the best and worst supermarkets each year.
- Find out more: read our guide on how to spend less at the supermarket and watch the video below for more tips from our experts:
How do bigger shopping lists compare?
Which? also analysed the cost of a larger trolley of 144 grocery items, made up of the original 45 plus 99 more.
This trolley included a larger assortment of branded products, such as Andrex toilet paper, Cadbury hot chocolate and Cathedral City cheese. As you can’t always find these items in the discounter supermarkets, we haven’t been able to include Aldi or Lidl in this comparison. You can find more detail in the infographic below:
Asda came out cheapest for this trolley of groceries, continuing its streak, which started in January 2020, as the cheapest traditional supermarket. It cost £363.29, on average, for our big trolley shop, beating the next cheapest supermarket Sainsbury's (£375.84), by £12.55.
The most expensive supermarket based on our analysis in January 2023, meanwhile, was Waitrose. Its total for our trolley was £45.43 more expensive than Asda, coming in at £408.72, on average, for the same range of products.
- Find out more: try our free My Money Health Check tool for tailored money-saving tips.
How Which? compares supermarket prices
We look at the prices of hundreds of grocery items at eight major supermarkets every day throughout the year, using an independent price comparison website.
For each supermarket, we calculate the average price for each item across the month, then add those up to get each store’s average trolley price. To keep things fair, we also include special offers, but we don’t count multibuys or loyalty scheme discounts.
Our shopping list includes branded items, such as Bonne Maman marmalade, as well as own-label cod fillets. Own-brand items won’t be identical across the supermarkets, however, so we’ve used experts to ensure everything we’ve compared is as similar as possible, based on factors including quality and weight.
- Find out more:supermarket price comparison over time
What's happening to supermarket food prices?
Which? has launched a unique inflation tracker that looks solely at inflation for popular supermarket food and drink.
The latest results show that in December food and drink inflation was at 15% overall across the eight supermarkets, compared to the same month a year earlier.
However, butters and spreads went up an astonishing 29.4%. Milk (26.3%), cheese (22.3%), bakery items (19.5%), water (18.6%) and savoury pies, pastries and quiches (18.5%) also saw bigger-than-average increases.
- Find out more: Which?'s monthly supermarket food inflation tracker in depth
Which?'s Affordable Food For All campaign
With the price of essential products soaring, supermarkets have a crucial role to play to help.
We’re calling on supermarkets to commit to clear pricing, better access to budget ranges that enable healthy choices and more offers for those who need them most.
Do you want to see your supermarket take action? Sign the petition.
