An online price-tracking website that’s constantly monitoring price increases and decreases across six major UK online supermarkets saysd Asda has retained its title as the least expensive option for British consumers looking to keep their grocery costs down right now.
The latest research found that Asda is the reigning champion – found to be the most affordable supermarket right now, while Sainsbury’s came second, with a current average basket cost of £120.87 (just £3.81 more expensive than Asda). After analysing prices across all of the six supermarkets, Asda was revealed as the least expensive for the consumer weekly shop and by a fair amount still; a whole £15.79 cheaper than Waitrose – the most expensive supermarket right now being tracked.
Sainsbury’s battled with Morrisons for second place throughout June. Sainsbury’s offered the second most affordable shop for the three out of the four weeks of analysis, albeit by close margins – there was just a £1.33 average basket cost difference between them and Morrisons. Morrisons’ costs lowered towards the end of the month; their basket value dropped down by £97p from £121.46 in week three to £120.43 in week four, offering the second cheapest basket shop for the last week of the month. Although they were pipped to the post by runners-up Sainsbury’s, Morrisons moved up the leader board to third place from last month, while Tesco dropped to fourth place.
Ocado and Waitrose continued to compete with each other to not be named the most expensive of the largest supermarkets being tracked – with a marginal price difference of £2.62 this time around. However, Waitrose’s basket costs were the priciest throughout the whole of June, even £6.58 more expensive than Ocado’s for week three.
Looking into price changes across the board, the price of alcohol, including gin, vodka and beer, fluctuated throughout the month across all six supermarkets as Britons were shopping ahead of the Queen’s Jubilee Bank Holiday in the first week of June. Gin and vodka at Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s started the month at £16 and then, for the last two weeks of the month, decreased by almost 20% to £13 at both Asda and Sainsbury’s. Furthermore, a pack of four beers at Asda cost £5 during the week of the Jubilee celebrations, and then dropped to £4 for the final week of June.
Surprisingly though, the price of meat and fish remained the same for all supermarkets throughout the month, despite the Jubilee celebrations taking place, the UK heatwave in the third week of June and with BBQ season in full swing. Morrisons offered both the most affordably priced pork sausages and chicken breast fillets for the entirety of June, at just £2.50 per 400g and £4.15 per 630g, while Asda had the cheapest salmon fillets, at £3.55 per 240g.
Andy Barr, co-founder of www.alertr.co.uk, said: “For the weekly shop, as it currently stands, there’s still a stark difference between the top and bottom spots on the leader board of almost £16. Throughout the year so far, we’ve seen much less disparity across the rest of the board, especially between those supermarkets placing second, third and fourth – Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco, which tend to alternate each month. However, Asda remains at the top of the leader board, with a respectable price difference of £3.81 between them and runners-up, Sainsbury’s. While the £1.83 price difference between Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, and Morrisons and Tesco (a marginal 21p) shows that the top four supermarkets are once again competing much more closely.
“It’ll be interesting to see how the battle of the supermarkets will play out over the next few months – whether Asda will continue to reign supreme and if the other spots on the leader board alternate again. With the cost-of-living squeezing household incomes more than ever, and the Bank of England suspecting further inflation and interest rate rises, who knows how the supermarket sector will cope for the rest of the year and if this will impact their product prices.”
The online price-tracking website has been tracking the prices of 42 everyday items from the shopping basket on the Office for National Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI) since 2019. Included within the list are items such as eggs, milk and bread, as well as non-perishables such as pasta, rice and cereal. The prices across six of the largest supermarkets are analysed, with discount retailers Lidl and Aldi not included due to the inability for customers to shop full ranges online and not having the same like-for-like branded products that other supermarkets stock.
Own-brand items (or their equivalent) were monitored in the research to give the most unbiased comparison of goods and their prices, with the exception of branded items that all six supermarkets stocked (e.g., Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s Cornflakes, etc.).
The full breakdown of each supermarket’s current basket costs are as follows:
1. ASDA - £117.06
2. Sainsbury’s - £120.87
3. Morrisons - £122.20
4. Tesco - £122.41
5. Ocado - £130.20
6. Waitrose - £132.85
To ensure the results across the stores are fair, if an item is unavailable or out of stock in one of the six online stores then the product is dismissed entirely and not analysed within the final costs of all stores. Items can also be replaced with another like-for-like item, as long as it is in stock across all six retailers. However, for this current basket, no products that were being t
