Aldi was the cheapest supermarket of 2022, according to the latest Which? analysis.
We compared the prices of 48 popular groceries in December and found the total cost at Aldi was £81.63.
This makes it the cheapest supermarket for the seventh month in a row, and the cheapest supermarket overall for 2022.
In the wider analysis – including 149 items across the six 'traditional' supermarkets – we found that Asda was once again cheapest at £355.62.
Read on to find out how your supermarket compares.
Cheapest supermarket for a basket of groceries
Every day in December, we checked the price of 48 popular groceries, including Heinz baked beans, milk and tea bags, at some of the UK's biggest supermarkets to see how they compare.
The table below shows how much our basket cost on average:
Aldi was the cheapest overall, with our shop costing £81.63, on average, beating rival discounter Lidl by £1.61.
The same shop at Waitrose was £112.62, on average, making it nearly £31 more expensive than Aldi.
Of the 'big four' supermarkets, Tesco was the cheapest at £93.42.
Of course, price is just one factor when you're deciding which supermarket to shop at. We also survey shoppers on their experiences in terms of product quality, customer service, store experience, online deliveries and a range of other factors, to reveal the best and worst supermarkets each year.
- Find out more: read our guide on how to spend less at the supermarket and watch the video below for more tips from our experts
How do bigger shopping lists compare?
We also compared the cost of a larger trolley of 149 items (the original 48, plus 101 more).
This trolley included a larger number of branded items, such as Andrex toilet paper and Cathedral City cheese. You can’t always find these items in discounter supermarkets, so we haven’t included Aldi or Lidl in this comparison.
Asda cost the least for our big trolley of groceries at £355.62, on average. This means that Asda was the cheapest 'traditional' supermarket for every month of 2022.
Sainsbury's was the next cheapest in our December analysis (£368.97), followed by Tesco (£375.97).
Waitrose was a massive £51.33 more expensive than Asda, coming in at £406.95, on average, for the same trolley of goods.
Aldi crowned cheapest supermarket of 2022
Aldi was the cheapest supermarket in our analysis of seven out of 12 months in 2022, more than any other supermarket. We've crowned Aldi the cheapest supermarket of the year.
Lidl was the cheapest supermarket in the first five months of the year.
The two are consistently close in our monthly basket comparison, which includes own-brand products and a selection of available branded goods.
Across the seven months that Aldi was awarded 'cheapest supermarket of the month', the average difference was £1.59 compared to Lidl.
How Which? compares supermarket prices
We look at the prices of hundreds of grocery items at eight major supermarkets every day throughout the year, using an independent price comparison website.
For each supermarket, we work out the average price for each item across the month, then we add those up to get each store’s average trolley price. To keep things fair, we include special offers, but we don’t count multibuys or loyalty scheme discounts.
Our shopping list includes branded items, such as Heinz baked beans and Dolmio sauce, as well as own-brand products including apples and lettuce. Own-brand items won’t be identical across supermarkets, but we’ve used experts to ensure everything we’ve compared is as similar as possible, based on a number of factors, including quality and weight.
- Find out more: supermarket price comparison over time
What's happening to grocery prices?
In December, Which? launched a new price inflation tracker, revealing the supermarkets – and types of food and drink – with the fastest rising prices.
Our tracker looks at 20 popular categories of food and drink at eight supermarkets — Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. It compares prices across the same three-month and one-month periods year on year, including discounts but not multibuys or loyalty card offers.
Late last year, we found that products at Aldi had the highest level of inflation – up 19.6% in the month to November 30. This was closely followed by Lidl at 19%.
Inflation is a measure of how quickly prices are rising or falling over time, not of absolute price. So while Aldi and Lidl had the highest inflation, they were also the cheapest supermarkets overall in November and December in our research.
Butters and spreads were the products with the highest inflation of all 20 categories in our analysis.
We'll be publishing supermarket inflation tracker details for December in the next few weeks. You can find out more in our guide: what's happening to supermarket food prices?
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source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-was-the-cheapest-supermarket-in-2022-aulOn6x0ygaE