Budget Vegetarian Groceries: Aldi Saves You $13.96

Aldi wins this 14-item vegetarian mid-week basket at $47.23, that's $13.96 cheaper than Coles ($61.19) and $10.37 cheaper than Woolies ($57.60). IGA clocks in at $59.71 but couldn't stock two of the items at all.

That $13.96 gap is real money across a month. Run the same basket four times and you're looking at nearly $56 back in your pocket just by switching stores. It's not a rounding error.

What This Basket Covers

Fourteen items. Five meatless weeknight dinners for a household of two to four. The basket leans on tinned legumes (chickpeas and lentils), pantry staples (penne, pasta sauce, jasmine rice, diced tomatoes, olive oil), and a handful of chilled proteins and fresh veg (halloumi, firm tofu, free-range eggs, mushrooms, baby spinach, brown onions, garlic).

Nothing exotic. Nothing that requires a specialty grocer. Every item should be on the shelf at each of the four stores we compared.

Budget Vegetarian Groceries: Where the Big Gaps Are

The chilled aisle is where Aldi really pulls away from the pack.

Halloumi is the single loudest price signal in this basket. Aldi's 200g block sits at $4.99. That same size at Coles and Woolies runs noticeably higher. If you're buying halloumi once a fortnight, Aldi is the obvious move.

Firm tofu (375g) tells a similar story. Aldi has it at $2.59, making it one of the cheapest per-gram protein options in the whole basket. Tofu often gets written off as a splurge item by shoppers who assume it's pricy, the Aldi price makes that assumption wrong.

Free-range eggs (12 pack) come in at $5.99 at Aldi. Free-range eggs at that price point are genuinely good value, and eggs are doing a lot of heavy lifting across several of these five dinners.

The pantry tins are also a clear Aldi sweep. Chickpeas ($0.89 each, you're buying three), lentils ($0.89 each, two tins), penne ($0.89 each, two packs) and pasta sauce ($1.59), none of those figures are going to be beaten at Coles or Woolies on a standard week. Jasmine rice (1kg) at $2.99 and olive oil (500ml) at $7.99 round out a pantry run that, at Aldi, costs considerably less than either of the big two.

Where the Prices Are Basically Even

Two items sit closest to parity across all stores.

Brown onions (1kg) are cheapest at Aldi ($2.99) but the spread to Woolies and Coles is small enough that it wouldn't drive anyone's store choice on its own.

Baby spinach (120g) at $1.99 (Aldi) is close to what you'll pay at Woolies. The Coles and IGA prices are higher but not dramatically so, this isn't a line item that changes the overall maths much.

Diced tomatoes (400g) are actually cheapest at Coles at $0.95 per tin, edging out Aldi. Same for garlic (3 pack) at $1.98 from Coles. So the big-two aren't a total shutout, they just lose on so many other lines that the wins don't save the total.

Cup mushrooms (500g) are cheapest at Woolies at $2.30, which is a genuine win for the greens aisle and a reason Woolies finishes second overall.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth an Extra Trip?

Honest answer: probably not for most households.

The only items where Coles beats Aldi are diced tomatoes ($0.95 vs Aldi's $0.95, they're actually equal, and garlic at $1.98). Woolies grabs mushrooms. That's a $2 saving at most if you hit both stores. That saving disappears instantly against the time cost and petrol of a second stop.

The one exception is if you already shop near both stores, say, a Woolies and an Aldi that share a car park, which is more common than it used to be. In that case, grabbing your mushrooms at Woolies while everything else goes in the Aldi trolley makes sense. But driving across town for it? No.

According to CHOICE's September 2025 quarterly basket report, Aldi was again the cheapest supermarket across a 15-item basket, a finding that lines up exactly with what we're seeing here. So this isn't a one-off pricing anomaly, it's a structural pattern.

Who Should Shop Where

Shop entirely at Aldi if you have one nearby. At $47.23 all-in, you get the full basket, no compromises, and the biggest saving. The pantry staples are where Aldi earns its reputation, and the chilled aisle, particularly halloumi and tofu, cements it.

Shop at Woolies if there's no Aldi near you. At $57.60 it's $3.59 cheaper than Coles for the same basket and it stocks everything on the list. For vegetarian households who care about produce quality and need a reliable stock of fresh veg like mushrooms and spinach, Woolies is a reasonable second choice.

Shop at Coles if Woolies isn't accessible and Aldi isn't either. You're paying the most ($61.19) but everything's there, and at least you're getting diced tomatoes and garlic at the best prices in the basket.

IGA had two items unavailable when we checked. For a basket this focused, a patchy stock rate is a real problem, you'd need to make a second trip anyway, which wipes out any convenience benefit. IGA tends to price higher on pantry staples, and for a pulse-and-legume-heavy list like this one, that matters.

For retirees on a fixed income, this basket is worth planning around. At Aldi, five dinners for two people costs under $50 including oil, eggs, and a full week of pantry top-ups. That's hard to beat without sacrificing protein or variety.

For families running meat-free nights two or three times a week, the chickpea and lentil lines are the ones to watch. Buying three tins of chickpeas at $0.89 each from Aldi ($2.67 total) versus the Coles equivalent is where those small-per-unit differences start to compound into real savings over the month.

Canstar Blue's July 2025 survey put the average Australian household's weekly grocery spend at $178. A basket like this, five dinners from $47, shows how much room there is to pull that figure down just by going meatless a few nights a week and knowing which store to hit for each category.