What lowtein does

Every Thursday morning, we pull the weekly flyer from each major grocery chain that serves your city. We extract the price, item name, validity dates, and source link. We normalize prices to a common unit (per pound for meat, per litre for milk, per 100 g for cheese, per dozenfor eggs) so different retailers' pack sizes can be ranked side-by-side. Then we show you the cheapest.

Where the data comes from

We poll 15 retailers, depending on the city: No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, Zehrs, Loblaws, Your Independent Grocer, Wholesale Club, Metro, Food Basics, FreshCo, Sobeys, Foodland, Farm Boy, Fortinos, Adonis, Longo's, Giant Tiger, and Walmart. Not every chain operates in every city — what you see is what's actually available where you are.

Every price links back to that retailer's own flyer page. You can verify any claim by clicking the source link. We don't republish flyer images or compete with the retailers; we just point you at the deals they're already publishing.

Is this really the cheapest?

For each cut, we show you the entire ranking — tap a row to see every retailer we polled for that cut this week, with their prices. If we're cheapest by $1, the other retailers' prices are right there to verify. If we missed a retailer your city has, email contact@lowtein.com and we'll add them.

Is the price actually good?

When you tap a row, the expanded panel shows two independent reference points:

• Statistics Canada Ontario average — the province-wide monthly retail average for that cut, pulled from StatCan Table 18-10-0245-01. Updates monthly, free open government data under the Open Government Licence — Canada.
• Our weekly trend — the lowest price we observed across all retailers each week since we started tracking. Sharpens with every Thursday refresh.

The two answer different questions. StatCan says "is this cheap compared to what Ontarians typically pay?" — our trend says "is this cheap compared to recent weeks at the retailers we cover?" Together they make the savings claim falsifiable.

No AI guessing

Prices on lowtein are pulled directly from each retailer's structured flyer data. No model is inferring or guessing prices. Where a flyer lists an item with no clear per-unit weight (e.g., a tray priced "$15" with no gram count), we drop it from the comparison rather than estimate.

What's limited

• Some flyers only list app-only deals (Metro eOffers, PC Optimum point deals). We capture the regular weekly flyer; in-app member-only deals don't appear here yet.
• Pricing changes happen mid-week occasionally. We refresh every Thursday morning, so a Wednesday markdown might not show up until next week.
• Price history is short — we started tracking in May 2026, so "typical" comparisons get sharper every week.
• We rank by published price per unit. We don't weigh in on quality, freshness, or store conditions. We're showing arithmetic, not a recommendation.

No accounts, no ads

Lowtein is free. We don't require an account, run ads, sell data, or use affiliate links. The site is a side project run by one person on a small EC2 instance.