Budget Grocery List Under $100: Aldi vs Coles vs Woolies

The average Australian household is spending around $178 a week on groceries, according to Canstar Blue's 2025 survey, and that figure has climbed 11% since 2023. So the question "can I do a weekly food shop for $100?" is one a lot of people are genuinely asking right now.

Short answer: yes, for one or two people, you can. Here's exactly what it costs.

We built a 15-item basket covering every category you actually need for a week: bread, milk, eggs, oats, pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, baked beans, frozen veg, fresh veg, fruit, beef mince, and tasty cheese. No snacks, no soft drinks, no premium brands. Just the stuff that gets meals on the table.

What This Budget Grocery List Costs at Each Store

Aldi comes in first at $52.98, but one item in the basket isn't stocked there, so that's worth keeping in mind. Coles is 48 cents more at $53.46, with a full 15 items available. Both are well under $100.

Woolies at $64.12 and IGA at $63.95 are in a different bracket entirely, $11 more than Coles for the same trolley. That's not a rounding error. Over a year, shopping at Woolies instead of Coles for this basket adds up to around $575.

Where the Biggest Savings Are

A few items drive most of the gap between stores.

Beef mince is one to watch. ABC News reported recently that basics like milk and mince are rising because of weather events affecting farmers, and that's showing up in the data. Aldi's 500 g pack is $6.49. If your usual store is Woolies or IGA, check what you're paying, the spread on mince across supermarkets tends to be wide.

Pasta is where Aldi really earns its reputation. Two 500 g packs at $0.89 each, that's $1.78 total for a full week of pasta. Coles and Woolies charge more for their own-brand pasta, and it tastes pretty much the same.

Diced tomatoes (two 400 g tins) hit just $0.95 each at Coles, $1.90 total. That's the cheapest of any store in our basket. Tinned tomatoes are one of those items where Coles' own-brand pricing is genuinely hard to beat.

Bananas at Aldi cost $0.81 per kilo. That's not a misprint. Aldi's fresh produce pricing on common fruit is consistently low, and bananas are the standout example.

Rolled oats, $1.60 per kilo at IGA, which is the cheapest across all four stores. A good reminder that IGA isn't always the expensive one; it depends on the category.

Where Prices Are Basically the Same

Not everything has a meaningful spread. Full cream milk (2 L) and brown onions (1 kg, $2.00 at Coles) are broadly similar across stores, you're not going to save $5 by driving across town for those.

Frozen mixed vegetables (500 g) are $1.09 at Coles, cheap anywhere you look. Potatoes (2 kg) at $4.50 at Coles are the same story. These are categories where the big supermarkets compete closely, and you're unlikely to find daylight between them.

Tasty cheese (250 g) at $4.20 is Coles' cheapest in our basket. This one does vary a bit between stores, but not dramatically. If you buy on special, you'll likely beat $4.20 anyway, 250 g blocks of tasty cheese go on promotion regularly at both Coles and Woolies.

Is Cherry-Picking Worth the Extra Trip?

Splitting the shop across stores to grab the cheapest price on every item gets you to $47.96, a saving of $5.02 over just shopping at Aldi, or $5.50 over Coles.

Honestly? For most people, no. Five dollars doesn't cover the petrol to a second supermarket, let alone the time. If Aldi and Coles are next to each other in your local shopping centre, which is increasingly common, then grabbing bananas and pasta from Aldi and your diced tomatoes and oats from Coles costs you nothing extra. That's when cherry-picking makes sense.

But building a weekly routine around hitting three different stores to save $5 on a $53 basket? The maths don't hold up. Pick one store that suits your area, and move on.

Who Should Shop Where

Aldi is the pick if you're cooking from scratch, you're not brand-loyal, and you have an Aldi nearby. The pantry staples, pasta, baked beans, mince, bananas, are consistently the cheapest here. The one missing item in our basket is a minor inconvenience.

Coles is the practical choice if you want a full basket, no missing items, and prices that still come in well under $60. Coles own-brand tinned tomatoes, potatoes, and onions are all cheaply priced, and the store is more widely available than Aldi in some suburbs and regional areas.

Woolworths charges $11 more for this basket than Coles. There's no item in this particular shop where Woolies is clearly the cheapest, so if you're budget-focused, it's hard to recommend. That said, if Woolies is your closest store, $64.12 is still well under $100.

IGA is a mixed bag. Rolled oats ($1.60) and eggs ($3.50 for 12) are genuinely the cheapest in the basket, surprisingly competitive. But the overall total at $63.95 reflects the fact that IGA pricing is less consistent across categories. Good for a top-up, trickier to rely on for a full weekly shop.

The question this basket answers is whether $100 a week for groceries is realistic in Australia. At Aldi or Coles, for one person or a small household cooking simple meals, it is, and you'll have $46 to $47 left over.