Lowtein report
Is there a cheapest grocery store in America?
What five months of flyer prices from 92 US cities show.
The short answer
Not really, at least not on advertised deals. From June to October, the store with the lowest advertised price on an item changed from one week to the next 60% of the time. In a typical city, the store that won most often won about half the weeks, and 5 different stores took a turn at being cheapest.
The cheapest store keeps changing
We tracked the same items in the same cities, week after week. That gave us 172 runs of at least eight weeks, each one a single item in a single city, like chicken breast in Cleveland. One store was cheapest for the whole run in only 2% of them.
Stores seem to take turns with their deals, so this week's best price on chicken may be somewhere else next week. If you always shop at one store, you'll catch some of those deals and miss the rest.
What checking other stores is worth
In the same city and week, on the same kind of product, here's how far the cheapest advertised price sat below the middle store's price.
| Item | Below middle store | Typical saving |
|---|---|---|
| Eggs, large | 26% | $1.00/dozen |
| Chicken breast | 20% | $0.52/lb |
| Pork chops, boneless | 17% | $0.50/lb |
| T-bone steak | 16% | $1.13/lb |
| Pork chops, bone-in | 14% | $0.31/lb |
| Butter | 14% | $0.50/lb |
| Ribeye steak | 14% | $2.00/lb |
| Sirloin steak | 14% | $1.00/lb |
| Strip steak | 13% | $1.80/lb |
| Ground beef, 80-84% lean | 9% | $0.50/lb |
| Ground beef, 85-89% lean | 9% | $0.50/lb |
| Ground beef, 90%+ lean | 8% | $0.50/lb |
Chicken breast shows a real gap, at 20%. Ground beef shows much less, at about 9%, once you compare the same lean grade. The gap held steady across the five months, at 14–17% in the typical comparison.
Some chains do win more often
This is how often each chain had the lowest advertised price, out of the comparisons it was part of. No chain won much more than half the time.
| Albertsons | 53% | 353 comparisons |
| ALDI | 49% | 974 comparisons |
| Safeway | 49% | 444 comparisons |
| Family Fare | 41% | 322 comparisons |
| Kroger | 37% | 656 comparisons |
| Food Lion | 32% | 452 comparisons |
| Meijer | 32% | 597 comparisons |
Each chain competes against different local stores, so read this as a rough guide, not a ranking. Albertsons and Safeway are owned by the same company.
Head to head
When two chains advertised the same kind of item in the same city and week, here's who had the lower price.
| ALDI vs Kroger | ALDI 75% · Kroger 9% · tied 17% | 186 |
| Publix vs Kroger | Publix 21% · Kroger 72% · tied 7% | 96 |
| Meijer vs Kroger | Meijer 46% · Kroger 46% · tied 8% | 380 |
| ALDI vs Lidl | ALDI 29% · Lidl 33% · tied 38% | 55 |
| ALDI vs Meijer | ALDI 84% · Meijer 16% · tied 0% | 164 |
| Food Lion vs Publix | Food Lion 71% · Publix 11% · tied 18% | 142 |
These cover the staples in this report, so they don't say which store is cheaper across a full cart.
What to do with this
You don't need to drive to five stores. Pick the items you buy most, usually meat, and check which store has the best price this week before you choose where to shop. See this week's deals on our US price pages or find your city.
How we did this
We reviewed 178,436 advertised prices from June to October 2026 and kept the 36,441 that could be compared fairly, from 196 stores across 22 weeks. Each comparison is one item, in one city, in one week, with at least three stores advertising it. That gave us 3,473 comparisons. We kept like with like: lean grades and steak cuts are compared separately, and organic, grass-fed and similar premium lines are left out.
Limits. These are advertised flyer prices, not shelf prices, and a store with no ad on an item isn't counted that week. Walmart, Costco and Target aren't in this data, so we can't say how they compare. When stores tied, each counted as a win. Chain prices repeat across cities, so a comparison count overstates how many independent prices we saw. We don't account for loyalty-card requirements or the cost of driving to another store.
Published 2026-11-01. Free to cite with a link to this page. Questions: contact@lowtein.com. See also the monthly Grocery Price Index.