Budget supermarket has dropped from cheapest to fourth in our monthly shopping survey. Since March, we have been tracking the price of a shopping basket at the top supermarkets.
Aldi has been the cheapest for eight of the past 10 months, but with other supermarkets offering deals in the lead up to Christmas it has dropped down the table.
In November the cost of the seven items, that include cheese, eggs and apples, at Aldi cost £10.50, a rise from £10.11 in November, and from £8.46 back in March.
Lidl was the cheapest with the seven items coming to a total of £9.93, mainly thanks to a reduction in price on the cheese and spaghetti.
Tesco came out as second cheapest in the last month of the year thanks to clubcard deals on cheese (from £4 to £2.75 with a clubcard) and apples (from £1.70 to 79p with a clubcard). The cost of the basket was £9.26, quite a drop from the £11.73 in November.
Last month, the basket of items cost more than £10 in all the supermarkets, but this month it has reduced to under that price in Lidl.
The most expensive was Morrisons which was priced at £11.63, up from £11.27 in November and £10.35 in March.
The items bought each month are:
- two pints of semi-skimmed milk
- a box of 6 free range eggs
- 350g pack of mature cheddar cheese
- 500g of spaghetti
- one load of thick-cut white sliced bread
- six Braeburn appeals
- a pack breakfast wheat cereal.
Eggs have seen the biggest rise in price in December because of the wholesale shortage. The only supermarket where the price went down was in Aldi (down to £1.19 from £1.25).
The most expensive supermarket for eggs was Marks and Spencer at £2.30, Tesco had a shortage of their cheapest range of eggs.
Consumer organisation Which? also does a monthly comparison of a large basket of items and their latest data for November found that Aldi was the cheapest for 48 popular groceries, costing £77.21, on average, beating rival discounter Lidl by £1.36.
The same shop at Waitrose was £104.11, on average, making it £26.90 more expensive compared to Aldi.
They also compared the cost of a larger trolley of 149 items (the original 48, plus 101 more). This trolley included a larger number of branded items, such as Andrex toilet paper and Cathedral City cheese.
The organisation said Asda cost the least with this trolley of groceries, "continuing its streak, which started in January 2020", as the cheapest traditional supermarket. It cost £355.34, on average, for te big trolley shop, beating the next cheapest, Sainsbury's (£366.83), by £11.49.
Waitrose was a whopping £38.03 more expensive than Asda, coming in at £393.37, on average, for the same trolley of goods.
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