September 2026: the cheapest (and priciest) grocery cities in Canada & the U.S.

Key findings

• Cheapest U.S. grocery city: Chicago — the staples basket's week's-best prices totalled US$18.57, vs US$38.06 in Billings — a 105% spread between the cheapest and priciest of 96 ranked U.S. cities.
• Cheapest Canadian grocery city: Toronto (C$22.74), with Edmundston the priciest of 68 ranked Canadian cities at C$48.55.
• Chasing the week's best deal paid off roughly 49% — across regions, the median week's-best advertised price for staple meats ran 21–49% below the government-published average price. That gap is what deal-following is worth.
• Biggest U.S. mover: Ground Beef (+36%) — the national median week's-best went from US$3.59 to US$4.89/lb across the month.

The basket: 1 lb chicken breast · 1 lb ground beef · 1 lb pork chops · 1 lb beef steak · 1 lb bacon · 1 dozen eggs · 1 lb butter. City totals are in local currency (C$ vs US$) and are not comparable across countries.

Method

Each city's basket = sum over items of the MEDIAN (across the month's weeks) of that week's CHEAPEST observed price at any tracked retailer. Cities ranked only when every basket item has 3+ weeks of observations. Ontario cities include the shared Ontario-uniform chain flyers, availability-filtered per city.

Prices come from retailers' published weekly flyers and, where flyers don't exist, their own online stores — the same data behind every Lowtein city page. Government baselines: Statistics Canada Table 18-10-0245-01 (provincial monthly retail averages) and U.S. BLS Average Price Data (census-region monthly averages). Weeks with fewer than three observation days are excluded from the movers. See the full methodology.