Budget Grocery List for Dinners: Aldi Wins at $52.37

Groceries are costing Australians more than ever. A 2025 Canstar Blue survey found the average household is spending $178 a week on groceries, up 6% from the year before. So it's no surprise that "budget meals for a week" and "cheap dinner ideas for a family" are among the most searched grocery terms in the country right now.

This basket is built for exactly that. Thirteen dinner-only items: mince, chicken thighs, sausages, pasta, rice, lentils, tinned tomatoes and the vegetables that stretch them across five nights. No breakfast, no snacks, no cleaning products. Just the honest cost of feeding a household its evening meals.

We priced everything at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA. Here's what we found.

What This Budget Grocery List Costs at Each Store

The gap between stores is real and worth knowing about:

• Aldi: $52.37 (one item not stocked)
• Coles: $58.03
• Woolworths: $64.80
• IGA: $69.35

Aldi beats every other store by at least $5.66, and beats IGA by nearly $17. That's not a rounding difference, that's almost two extra weeknight dinners.

One item in this basket isn't available at Aldi (jasmine rice isn't always stocked), which is worth knowing before you go. That said, Aldi's Doongara or long-grain rice is usually on the shelf and similar in price, so it's not a deal-breaker for most shoppers.

CHOICE's quarterly basket tracking, updated in early 2025, found that Aldi's basket prices have actually fallen slightly over the past year, while Woolworths prices nudged up. That trend lines up exactly with what we're seeing here.

Where the Biggest Savings Are

Three items in this basket drive most of the price gap between stores.

Thin beef sausages (1 kg) are $3.89 at Aldi. Coles and Woolies both charge noticeably more for comparable 1 kg packs. For a weeknight snag dinner that feeds four, $3.89 is hard to argue with.

Chicken thigh fillets (1 kg) are $5.84 at Aldi. Chicken thighs are the most forgiving cut for budget cooking, they don't dry out, they take on flavour well, and they stretch further than breast. At under $6 a kilo, they're doing a lot of work in this basket.

Pasta (500 g) is $0.89 at Aldi. You'll pay close to double that at Woolies or Coles for an equivalent store-brand pack. At 89 cents, it's genuinely one of the best-value items in any Australian supermarket right now.

Pasta sauce (500 g) is $1.59 at Aldi, which also undercuts both majors. Combined, the pasta and sauce come to $2.48, a spaghetti bolognese base for a family of four for under $2.50. Add the mince and some frozen veg, and you're looking at a full dinner for well under $10.

Where the Prices Are Close Enough Not to Matter

Not every item in this basket tells a dramatic story. A few are close across stores.

Brown onions (1 kg) are $2.00 at Coles, which wins, but Woolies and Aldi aren't far behind. The difference across a week's shopping is cents, not dollars, don't drive to a different suburb for onions.

Diced tomatoes (400 g x2) are cheapest at Coles at $0.95 each. Woolies is close. These are the kind of pantry items where private-label packs at any major are basically the same quality and similar price.

Beef mince (500 g) is $6.49 at Aldi, which is the cheapest in this basket. But the gap to Coles on mince has narrowed recently, Coles has lowered prices on more than 300 items this year as part of a broader push to close the gap with Aldi on everyday staples. Mince is one of the categories where that effort is showing.

Lentils (400 g) are cheapest at Woolies at $0.95, same price as Coles's diced tomatoes. At under a dollar for a tin of lentils, any store that has them is fine.

Is Cherry-Picking the Cheapest Store for Each Item Worth It?

If you bought the cheapest version of every item across all four stores, you'd pay $47.03. That's $5.34 less than shopping entirely at Aldi.

For most households, that saving isn't worth it. You'd need to visit at least three stores (Aldi for meat and pasta, Coles for onions, frozen veg and potatoes, Woolies for rice and lentils, IGA for carrots). That's time, fuel, and extra mental load for a weekly shop that's supposed to be simple.

The one exception: if you already shop at both Coles and Aldi (which a lot of Australians do, pick up the branded stuff at one, the basics at the other), you can quietly grab the rice and lentils from Woolies if it's nearby and save a few dollars without any extra effort.

But as a strategy? Single-store Aldi at $52.37 is the practical winner for this basket.

Budget Grocery List for Dinners: Who Should Shop Where

Aldi-first households, this basket is made for you. The meat prices are strong, the pantry staples are cheap, and the total of $52.37 for five nights of dinners is genuinely good value. Your only task is finding an equivalent rice if jasmine isn't on the shelf.

Coles shoppers, you're paying $58.03, which is fair. The Coles Down Down range has brought prices down on a few items in this basket, and if you've got a Flybuys account you'll claw back a little over time. For shoppers who prefer the flexibility of click-and-collect or home delivery, the $5.66 premium over Aldi is reasonable.

Woolworths shoppers, the $64.80 total is the hardest to justify for a budget dinner basket. Woolies is fine for the rice ($2.25 is actually its cheapest item in this basket) and the lentils, but the meat prices are where it hurts most. If Woolies is your main store, consider picking up sausages, thighs and mince at Aldi if there's one nearby.

IGA shoppers, IGA at $69.35 makes sense only if it's genuinely the closest or most convenient option. The carrot price ($1.50/kg) is the cheapest in the basket, but one item doesn't shift the maths enough to matter. IGA's strength is location, not price.

The broader picture: Yahoo Finance reported earlier this year that for a basket of 14 essential items including mince, pasta and fresh vegetables, Aldi was $15+ cheaper than both Coles and Woolworths. Our basket tells the same story.

For families searching for cheap dinner ideas or a budget meal plan shopping list, Aldi is doing the most work.