Grocery Price Index: Week 1 Baseline, Aug 2025
The first Cuugo Grocery Price Index is here. Same 15 staples, four stores, priced every Friday. This week's winner is Coles at $72.75, with a catch.
Every Friday, Cuugo prices the same 15 staples at Coles, Woolies, Aldi and IGA. Nothing changes in the basket, the whole point is to track what stores are doing to prices over time, not to chase specials. This is Week 1, so there's no prior week to compare against. What you're reading is the baseline.
The full methodology and running chart live on the hub page. This post is the frozen record for the week.
This week's basket totals
| Store | Total | Note | |, -|, -|, -| | Coles | $72.75 | 1 item unavailable | | Aldi | $76.67 | | | Woolies | $78.27 | | | IGA | $82.02 | 1 item unavailable |
Coles comes in cheapest at $72.75, but one item wasn't available, so that total isn't directly comparable to Woolies or Aldi. Same goes for IGA at $82.02. Aldi is the cheapest store where the full basket was available.
The gap between Aldi ($76.67) and IGA ($82.02) is $5.35 on a like-for-like basket. Woolies sits $1.60 above Aldi.
A Canstar Blue survey from July 2025 put the average Aussie household's weekly grocery spend at $178. Our 15-item basket is a subset of a full shop, but the per-item gaps below show exactly where that spend adds up.
The biggest per-item gaps this week
These are the items where shopping around makes the most difference:
- Chicken breast fillets, $9.17 at IGA, $14.50 at Coles. A $5.33 gap on a single item.
- Toilet paper, $4.60 at IGA, $13.49 at Aldi. Aldi's pack size is almost certainly larger, so this one needs a per-sheet check before you draw conclusions.
- Beef mince, $5.49 at Aldi, $10.00 at IGA. Worth checking pack weights here too.
- Weet-Bix, $6.88 at Aldi, $11.00 at IGA. Aldi's is a home-brand equivalent, not the Sanitarium original.
- Tasty cheese block, $5.50 at Coles, $9.00 at IGA.
- Cavendish bananas, $4.86 at Aldi, $7.92 at Woolies. A $3.06 gap on produce is worth knowing.
- Apples, $2.99 at Aldi, $5.50 at Coles.
- Sliced white bread, $3.00 at Aldi, $4.70 at Coles.
If you cherry-pick the cheapest available price for each of the 15 items across all four stores, the basket comes to $64.91. Compared to doing your whole shop at Woolies ($78.27), that's a $11.76 saving every week, or about $612 a year.
That's not a realistic shop for most people. But it does show you where the gaps are worth acting on. Chicken, cheese, bananas and Weet-Bix are the four items where a single-store swap can make a real dent.
Frequently asked questions
What's in the Cuugo Grocery Price Index basket?
The basket has 15 everyday staples priced every Friday at Coles, Woolies, Aldi and IGA. It includes sliced white bread, free range eggs, chicken breast fillets, beef mince, Weet-Bix, apples, cavendish bananas, carrots, tasty cheese block, long grain rice, butter, toilet paper, laundry powder, and two other core items. The full list and methodology are on the Cuugo Price Index hub page.
Which supermarket is cheapest for groceries in Australia right now?
In Week 1 of the Cuugo Grocery Price Index, Aldi had the cheapest full basket at $76.67. Coles came in at $72.75 but had one item unavailable, making it not directly comparable. Woolies was $78.27 and IGA $82.02 (also one item unavailable). If you cherry-pick the cheapest price per item across all four stores, the basket drops to $64.91.