Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
How to compare supermarket prices
Reading Time: 3 minutesSince MySupermarket closed down, there’s been a gap in the market for a really good supermarket comparison site or app. Luckily, there are now a few to choose from. Some are more user friendly than others but they can all help you save money on your shopping. We round them up here for you:
TROLLEY
Trolley is probably the closest to MySupermarket.
Shoppers can compare over 130,000 items and 7000 brands across more than 15 supermarkets and shops. It covers the big names (Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Co-op, Lidl, Aldi, Iceland, Waitrose and Ocado) as well as Boots, Wilko, B&M and Poundland.
Price are updated daily and include multi-buy and promotional offers. Users can also set up price alerts for their regular items or items they are waiting to come down in price. We particularly like the “Today’s Best Bargains” section. There is also the option to browse by ‘aisle’, eg household, or fresh fruit, just like you would in the supermarket.
Once you’ve found the best price for an item you can add to your ‘shopping list’ and review it at the end. This can help you make a decision on where to get the best savings overall week on week.
Verdict: Easy to use and really comprehensive
PRICEABLE
Another really user friendly site.
Priceable tracks over 150,000 products daily from the UK’s top supermarkets. It lets you compare grocery prices, discounts and multibuy offers too and its split list function means you can work out the cheapest price for your shopping overall. (You can toggle between cheapest and comparison. We were confused at first but it makes sense when you try it!)
If you have a preferred supermarket, you can select just this supermarket in the menu. Priceable will automatically compare product prices and tell you if you have the best price at your preferred supermarket, or show you how much you can save to buy the product elsewhere.
Like Trolley you can add items to your basket and again see where is best overall for your weekly shop.
Verdict: A really good and user friendly site. It doesn’t have quite the coverage that Trolley does yet – but more supermarkets are going to be added (according to the website)
Supermarket Comparison
LatestDeals.co.uk has a tool for comparing prices within its app (available on both iOS and Google Play) – called ‘Supermarket Comparison’.
It’s completely free and at first glance looks user friendly with a wide coverage of supermarkets. However, you can only search for single items (eg tea, or bread). You have to type in the item you are interested in and it will show you a long list of prices and then take you to a page when you tap on the one you like the look of.
So, for example, we searched for Yorkshire Tea and it took us to a long page of results. We found the box we wanted (240 bags) and we clicked on that, and were taken to the Sainsbury’s website. We had to then navigate back to the app to look for another item…
Verdict – ok for single use but not useful for big shops
My Supermarket Compare
Like Supermarket Comparison, this site only lets you put in single items to check for where they are cheapest. Again, this is ok if you’re not trying to do a whole shop or find where you are going to make the most savings.
The site does let you see what is on offer currently which could be handy.
Verdict: a bit basic but could be handy for quickly seeing where your favourite item is cheapest
Overall each of these sites and apps has something slightly different to offer so we suggest you take a look a them all and see which one suits you. If we had to pick, we would go for Trolley simply because it covers so many stores, with Priceable a very close second.
hellosupermarket is a really good new option!
Supermarket Comparison can only be used via a Smart phone, so that’s me out. Going to try a few more.