Lidl was the next cheapest supermarket and was £2.69 more expensive than its discount rival.
Read on to find out more about how your supermarket’s prices compare in our analysis.
Cheapest supermarket for a basket of groceries
Which? checked the price of 43 popular grocery items every day in February at some of the UK's biggest supermarkets to see how they compare.
The products in our basket included own-label milk, pasta and apples, plus a small selection of branded groceries such as PG Tips tea bags.
The chart below shows how much the basket cost on average:
Aldi’s basket was the cheapest overall in February 2023, with our shop costing £74.81, on average, beating rival discounter Lidl by £2.69.
The same shop at Waitrose was £96.59, on average, making it £21.78 pricier than Aldi.
Of the 'big four' supermarkets, Sainsbury's was the cheapest at £85.25. There was just 7p difference between Sainsbury's and Tesco (£85.32) and Asda wasn't far behind either (£85.81).
Find out more:How do bigger shopping lists compare?
Which? also analysed the cost of a larger trolley of 139 grocery items, made up of the original 43 plus 96 more.
This trolley included a larger assortment of branded products, such as Andrex toilet paper, Cathedral City cheese and Hovis bread. As you can’t always find these items in the discounter supermarkets, we haven’t been able to include Aldi or Lidl in this comparison. You can find more detail in the infographic below:
Asda came out cheapest for this trolley of groceries, continuing its streak (which started in January 2020) as the cheapest traditional supermarket. It cost £355.29, on average, for our big trolley shop, beating the next cheapest supermarket Sainsbury's (£358.77) by £3.48.
The most expensive supermarket based on our analysis was Waitrose. Its total for our trolley was £41.29 more expensive than Asda, coming in at £396.58, on average, for the same range of products.
Find out moreHow 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 calculate the average price for each item across the month, then add those up to get each store’s average trolley price. To keep things fair, we also include special offers, but we don’t count multibuys or loyalty scheme discounts.
Our shopping list includes branded items, such as Bonne Maman marmalade, as well as own-label cod fillets. Own-brand items won’t be identical across the supermarkets, however, so we’ve used experts to ensure everything we’ve compared is as similar as possible, based on factors including quality and weight.
Find out more:What's happening to supermarket food prices?
Which? has launched a unique inflation tracker that looks solely at inflation for popular supermarket food and drink.
The tracker found price increases for value foods was 21.6%, far outstripping branded groceries which rose by 13.2% year on year.
Meanwhile premium ranges went up by 13.4% over the same time and standard own-brand foods were up by 18.9%.
Find out more:Which?'s Affordable Food For All campaign
With the price of essential products soaring, supermarkets have a crucial role to play to help.
We’re calling on supermarkets to commit to clear pricing, better access to budget ranges that enable healthy choices and more offers for those who need them most.
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