Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda: which is the cheapest UK supermarket?

If you are looking for the cheapest supermarket to do your weekly shop, new research suggests you'll be better off at Aldi.

Getting the right price on our weekly grocery shop is a top priority for many hard-pressed Brits.

Although food price inflation has decelerated for 14 consecutive months, it remained at 2.5% for June 2024, according to figures from the British Retail Consortium.

But which UK supermarket is the cheapest?

The cheapest supermarket

The team at Which? runs a useful study each month, which in June involved monitoring the daily price of 65 items to make up a basic trolley.

The consumer champion then used these daily prices to produce an average cost for those items during this period.

Of course, when it comes to own-label items, what’s on offer isn’t identical between the different stores.

How the supermarkets compare

Below is a round-up of how the various supermarkets fared.

As you can see from the table above, there’s a fairly significant difference between the deep discounters and the more premium outlets such as Ocado and Waitrose.

Indeed, Waitrose is £32 more expensive than Aldi.

Interestingly, while Lidl dominated this study last year ‒ topping the table in 11 out of 12 months ‒ Aldi has been claiming the top spot in 2024.

Also, bear in mind that using a loyalty scheme such as Clubcard can have a marked impact on your bill.

While Tesco comes in as the third cheapest if you factor in the reward scheme, it falls to sixth place without it.

The bigger trolley

Of course, many households pick up a wider range of items when they do their grocery shop, so Which? carried out a similar study with a total of 174 items.

That’s the original 65 goods and an additional 109 items.

Importantly, the consumer champion doesn’t disclose the list of products it includes in the research, to ensure supermarkets cannot ‘game’ the study by focusing price cuts on them.

However, as the additional items are not always available at the deep discounters, Aldi and Lidl aren’t included in this study.

Here’s how the supermarkets compare on the larger shopping basket:

The impact of loyalty schemes

Tesco (with Clubcard) claimed the top spot for the bigger trolley.

However, the supermarket came third from bottom for those shopping without use of the loyalty scheme (and even priced more expensive than premium brand Ocado).

Likewise, Sainsbury’s took third place for shoppers using a Nectar card but fell to second from bottom for those without.

The Grocer study

Which? isn’t the only organisation to take a keen eye on supermarket pricing.

Industry bible The Grocer also tracks prices, as well as other supermarket features such as service and product availability, at a rotating list of supermarkets each week.

Its latest survey had Asda come out on top, with the basket of selected goods coming to £65.13.

That was ahead of Tesco at £66.43, Sainsbury’s at £68.77, Morrisons at £69.51, and Waitrose at £76.41.

Note, all the prices above include loyalty schemes.

Again, the research found that Clubcard points lifted Tesco from third to second place in the rankings and meant a 7.6% discount for shoppers. 

In another key point, Sainsbury’s was the only supermarket whose basket came in cheaper than this time last year, recording a 1.7% year-on-year drop.

It’s important to note that the deep discounters were not included in this latest test ‒ when they have been, they have tended to perform particularly well.

Where do we want to shop?

With the cost-of-living crisis, it’s hardly a surprise that our shopping habits ‒ and particularly the supermarkets we use ‒ are changing.

However, it’s not in the way you might expect.

In previous years the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s have lost market share as shoppers have looked for cheaper deals, but they are recovering now, partly due to those lower prices for members. 

According to research from Kantar, Tesco, has grown its market share from 27.1% to 27.7% over the past 12 months, while Sainsbury’s has risen from 14.9% to 15.2%, and Lidl is up from 7.7% to 8.1%.

Asda and Morrisons have probably been the biggest victims. Asda has crashed from 13.7% to 12.8%, while Morrisons has slid from 8.8% to 8.7%.

Aldi has also seen its share slip from 10.2% to 10%, while Co-op is down from 5.8% to 5.5% over the same period. Waitrose, meanwhile, is unchanged with a 4.5% share.

The sales tactics employed by the big names are having an impact and suggest that shoppers are not entirely loyal to the deep discounters.