Cheap Vegetarian Dinners: Aldi Saves $11.86 vs Woolies

Five meatless weeknight dinners. Fourteen items. Four stores. The spread between cheapest and dearest? $11.86. That's not nothing, it's basically a free dinner.

This basket covers the building blocks of a solid vegetarian mid-week rotation: tinned chickpeas and lentils for curries and dals, halloumi and tofu for the nights you want something a bit more interesting, eggs, mushrooms, baby spinach, penne, rice, and the pantry staples that hold it all together. No exotic ingredients. No specialty store required.

Here's what each store charges for the full 14-item basket.

Aldi wins, and it isn't close. But the detail underneath matters more than the headline number.

Cheap Vegetarian Dinners: Where the Big Price Gaps Are

The chilled aisle is where Aldi earns its lead on this particular basket.

Halloumi is the sharpest example. At Aldi, a 200 g pack is $4.99. At Coles and Woolies the same format runs noticeably higher, and halloumi is the kind of product where both the major chains have historically priced it as a premium item because shoppers expect to pay more for it. Aldi doesn't play that game.

Firm tofu (375 g) sits at $2.59 at Aldi. If you've been buying tofu at Coles or Woolies without checking, you've probably been paying more than you need to. Tofu is a staple in a budget vegetarian kitchen, at $2.59 it's one of the cheapest protein sources per gram in this entire basket.

Free range eggs (12-pack) are $5.99 at Aldi. That's a competitive price for free range. Coles and Woolies regularly stock their own-brand free range eggs at similar or slightly higher prices, so the gap here is smaller than with halloumi and tofu, but Aldi still holds the edge.

Tinned chickpeas and lentils are where the pantry savings stack up fast. Aldi's price on a 400 g tin of chickpeas is $0.89, and this basket calls for three tins. Lentils are also $0.89 a tin, with two in the basket. Five tins at $0.89 each versus the prices at Coles or Woolies adds up across a month of shopping. A Canstar Blue survey from July 2025 found Aussie households are spending an average $178 a week on groceries, up 11% for four-person families over the past year. Shaving costs on pantry staples is exactly where that pressure shows up first.

Where the Prices Are Basically the Same

Not every item in this basket justifies driving past your usual store.

Diced tomatoes (400 g, two tins) are actually cheapest at Coles at $0.95 a tin, not Aldi. The gap versus Aldi is small enough that it won't swing your weekly decision, but it's worth knowing that the major chains win on specific pantry lines.

Brown onions (1 kg) are cheapest at Woolies at $2.50. Produce pricing moves around week to week depending on what's in season and what's on special, so this one might flip. Check the app before you drive.

Garlic (3-pack) is $1.98 at Coles. Again, a small gap versus Aldi, but across a year of cooking, garlic and onions and tinned tomatoes are the items you're buying every single week, so even modest differences compound.

Baby spinach (120 g) is $1.99 at Aldi. The major chains often run leafy greens on special, so this is another produce line to check in-app before you commit.

Penne and pasta sauce are firmly in Aldi's favour. Two 500 g packs of penne at $0.89 each and a 500 g pasta sauce at $1.59 make this a very cheap pasta night, and pasta with a vegetarian ragu or a chickpea arrabiata is legitimately one of the most cost-effective dinners in any household's rotation.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth the Extra Trip?

Running the cheapest price from whichever store has it lowest on each item gets you to $48.04, just $0.49 less than buying everything at Aldi.

That's the honest number. Forty-nine cents.

If you're already passing an Aldi on the way home from work, you don't need to read any further, just shop there. But if cherry-picking means two separate trips, you're spending more on petrol than you're saving on groceries. The maths doesn't work.

The one scenario where a split shop makes sense: if you're already at a Coles or Woolies for something you genuinely can't get at Aldi (a specific brand, a deli item, whatever), grab the diced tomatoes and garlic while you're there. Those two items are marginally cheaper at Coles anyway.

Who Should Shop Where

Aldi suits this basket best for most households. If you're cooking meatless meals to cut the weekly food bill and halloumi or tofu appear in your rotation, Aldi's chilled pricing alone justifies the trip. The full basket at $48.53 covers five dinners. That's under $10 a night for a household, and comfortably under $5 per person for a family of two.

Woolies at $55.75 is a reasonable fallback if there's no Aldi nearby or if you're combining this shop with your full weekly run. It's $4.21 cheaper than Coles on this basket, which adds up over a month.

Coles at $60.39 is the dearest option for this specific basket. You're paying a $11.86 premium over Aldi. Some weeks Coles runs good specials on halloumi or canned legumes that would shift this calculation, always check the catalogue first.

IGA at $59.96 with two items missing from stock is a tough sell for this particular basket. If IGA is your only option, you'll need to source the missing items elsewhere anyway, which makes the trip more complex than it's worth for a mid-week shop.

A July 2025 Canstar Blue survey found Australian families are spending nearly $9,300 a year on groceries. Switching even half your weekly vegetarian shop to Aldi for items like halloumi, tofu, tinned legumes and pasta could realistically save $400-$600 over a year without changing what you eat.

The Jasmine Rice and Olive Oil Question

Two items in this basket deserve a separate mention because they're bought less frequently but carry higher per-unit cost.

Jasmine rice (1 kg) is $2.99 at Aldi. If you're cooking rice-based meals two or three nights a week, buying it in bulk at Aldi or swapping to a 5 kg bag makes even more sense. The per-100 g cost drops significantly.

Olive oil (500 ml) at $7.99 at Aldi is a solid price for a mid-tier everyday cooking oil. This is the kind of item where Woolies and Coles can be $2, $4 dearer depending on the brand and whether they've got a special running. Stocking up at Aldi when you see it is sensible.

Both these items are pantry staples you buy once every few weeks rather than every shop, but they're in the basket because they're genuinely in the rotation for the dinners this basket supports (a stir-fry, a dal, a sautéed mushroom and spinach dish).

One More Thing About This Basket

The protein sources here, chickpeas, lentils, tofu, eggs, halloumi, are all nutritionally solid and genuinely cheap per serve. A 400 g tin of chickpeas costing $0.89 at Aldi contains roughly four serves of plant protein. Lentils at the same price are even more filling. This is the kind of basket that proves meatless eating isn't a sacrifice; it's just a different way of cooking that happens to be significantly kinder to your grocery budget right now.