Grocery Price Index: Coles Cheapest at $72.25
This week's Cuugo basket: Coles leads at $72.25, Aldi close behind, and IGA surges $18.60. Here's what moved and where to shop.
Coles comes in cheapest this week at $72.25 for the 15-item basket, with Aldi close behind at $74.53 and Woolies at $79.25. IGA clocks in at $101.02 but one item was unavailable, so that total isn't directly comparable. The same caveat applies to Coles, one item missing there too.
Every store dropped week-on-week. Coles fell the most, down $4.40 from $76.65. Woolies dropped $3.12 from $82.37. Aldi was down $2.63 from $77.16.
IGA went the other way: up $18.60 from $82.42 last week to $101.02 this week. That's a big jump. We don't have a specific reason for it from public sources this week, but IGA pricing regularly reflects independent store variation rather than a single national shelf price, individual stores set their own margins.
If you cherry-pick the cheapest price for each item across all four stores, your basket costs $61.67. That's $12.86 less than buying everything at Coles, the cheapest single store this week.
Where the biggest gaps are
A few items have unusually wide spreads worth knowing about:
Chicken breast fillets is the standout: $4.99 at Aldi versus $14.20 at Coles. That's a $9.21 difference on a single item. If you're buying chicken this week, Aldi is the obvious call.
Weet-Bix runs $6.88 at Aldi and $17.20 at IGA. Long grain rice is $1.80 at Coles and $7.20 at IGA. Both look like cases where IGA's independent pricing adds up fast.
Cavendish bananas flip the script a bit: Woolies is the dearest at $7.92, while Aldi has them for $4.86. Woolies does have the cheapest free range eggs this week though, at $5.00 versus $6.40 at IGA.
Toilet paper bucks the usual Aldi-is-cheapest pattern: IGA has it at $4.60, while Aldi is the dearest in the basket at $13.49. Brand and pack-size differences between stores can drive that, check the per-sheet price before you assume.
Tasty cheese block is $5.00 at Coles and $9.00 at IGA. Butter is $3.99 at Aldi and $5.95 at IGA. For pantry staples like these, Coles and Aldi are consistently hard to beat.
The full item-by-item price table is on the Cuugo Grocery Price Index hub, updated every Friday.
Frequently asked questions
What's in the Cuugo grocery price index basket?
The basket has 15 staples tracked every Friday: full cream milk, sliced white bread, free range eggs, chicken breast fillets, Weet-Bix, apples, Cavendish bananas, carrots, tasty cheese block, beef mince, long grain rice, butter, toilet paper, and laundry powder. The same items, same stores, every week, so you can track the trend over time. Full methodology is on the index hub page.
Which supermarket is cheapest for groceries in Australia right now?
This week, Coles has the lowest total for the full 15-item basket at $72.25 (one item unavailable), with Aldi close behind at $74.53. That said, cherry-picking the cheapest price for each item across all four stores gets your basket down to $61.67, a saving of $12.86 versus Coles alone.