Cheap Groceries for a Family of Four: Aldi Wins

According to Compare the Market, the average Australian household spent $206.54 a week on groceries as of June 2025. For a family of four, that number climbs fast. Bread, milk, mince, pasta, fruit, snacks for the lunchbox, the trolley fills up quickly and so does the total.

We priced 16 staples across Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA to see where families actually come out ahead this week.

What This Basket Costs at Each Store

Here's the headline total for all 16 items at a single store:

• Aldi: $98.90
• Coles: $97.18
• Woolworths: $106.49
• IGA: $124.05

Coles actually edges Aldi by $1.72 on this particular basket. That's close enough to be a wash depending on which suburb you're in and what's on special. Woolworths runs $9.31 dearer than Coles. IGA is in a different category entirely, $25.15 more than Aldi for the exact same items.

CHOICE's most recent quarterly basket survey found the same pattern, with Aldi the cheapest, followed by Woolworths, then Coles, then IGA. Our basket flips Aldi and Coles by a whisker, but the ranking otherwise holds.

Where the Biggest Cheap Groceries Savings Are

The per-item gaps are where the real story lives.

Meat is Aldi's strongest suit. Beef mince (1 kg) comes in at $6.49 at Aldi. Chicken thigh (1 kg) is $5.84. That's two dinners' worth of protein for about $12.33. Run those same items through IGA or Woolworths and you'll pay noticeably more. For families doing bolognese on Monday and a chicken stir-fry on Wednesday, this is where choosing Aldi adds up fastest.

Weet-Bix at $3.99 at Aldi is one of the basket's better deals in the breakfast aisle. That's a 1.2 kg box, big enough to last a school week and then some. Coles and Woolies both carry it at a higher price. At a box a fortnight, the saving across a year is real.

Bananas at $0.81 per kg at Aldi is the cheapest in the basket by a wide margin. Apples (1 kg) are $3.69 at Aldi too, making the fruit section a straightforward Aldi win this week.

Pasta is almost free at Aldi. Two 500 g bags at $0.89 each. If you're feeding four people spaghetti bolognese, you could do it for well under $15 in total once you add the $1.59 pasta sauce.

Where the Prices Are Basically the Same

Frozen peas (500 g) and potatoes (2 kg) are actually cheapest at IGA this week, at $2.00 and $4.50 respectively. Toilet paper (24 pack) is also cheapest at IGA at $4.50. That's unusual, IGA rarely wins on staples, but it's worth checking if you happen to walk past one.

Full cream milk (3 L) is $4.95 at Coles, making it the cheapest of the four stores on dairy. Carrots (1 kg) are also cheapest at Coles at $1.70.

Frozen chips (1.5 kg) go to Woolworths at $2.75. Not a huge saving over Aldi, but when you're buying for four kids who eat chips like it's a competitive sport, every bit counts.

The point is that no single store sweeps everything. The splits on produce and frozen goods are genuinely close this week.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth an Extra Trip?

If you bought each item at its cheapest store, you'd pay $86.31 for the full basket. That's $10.87 less than buying everything at Aldi, and $20.18 less than doing it all at Coles.

Sounds good on paper. The reality check: you'd be stopping at up to four different supermarkets to collect peas from IGA, frozen chips from Woolies, milk and carrots from Coles, and everything else from Aldi. That's two hours of your Saturday and probably $5-7 in fuel or parking.

For most families, the cherry-pick is worth doing across two stores at most, say, Aldi for the bulk of the shop and a quick swing through Woolies for anything they don't carry. The $10 saving disappears fast once you factor in the time and cost of extra stops.

The exception is if you're already driving past different stores on your regular route. Then grabbing the Coles milk and the Woolies chips costs you nothing extra, and the saving is free money.

Cheap Groceries for a Family of Four: Which Store to Choose

Go to Aldi if you want the simplest, cheapest full shop without overthinking it. The meat, cereal, pasta, fruit and bakery items are all strong this week. You'll need to be okay with Aldi's own brands on most things, but for family staples like mince and chicken, there's no quality story that justifies paying more elsewhere.

Go to Coles if Aldi isn't convenient or you want a wider selection. At $97.18 for this basket, it's only $1.72 cheaper than Aldi, so it's a genuinely competitive option. The milk and carrot prices are the best in the basket. Plus Coles tends to have more options if you're brand-loyal on things like cereal or pasta sauce.

Woolworths makes sense if there's a specific special running on something heavy in your trolley, or you're using Everyday Rewards points. On a like-for-like basket, it's $9.31 behind Coles this week, which is real money over the course of a month.

IGA is for top-ups, not main shops. At $124.05 for this basket, you're paying a 26% premium over Aldi. That said, if you live somewhere where IGA is the only option, its frozen peas, potatoes, and toilet paper are competitive enough that you're not getting completely gouged on those items.

A recent Compare the Market analysis put it well: grocery spending has started to ease not because prices are falling, but because families have got sharper about where and how they shop. Splitting a shop between Aldi and one other store is the most practical version of that instinct for a family of four.