How Much Can You Actually Save by Switching Supermarkets in Australia?

Grocery prices have been the headline for a while now. Food and non-alcoholic beverages rose again over the past year, and most Australian households already know it — the number on the receipt keeps climbing even when the trolley looks the same as last month. So the question people are actually asking isn't abstract: how much could switching things up realistically save?

Start with the obvious one: Woolworths vs Coles.

This is where most of the "switch and save" advice online starts, and it's also where it's weakest. Across a full weekly shop, the two supermarkets tend to land close to each other overall — one might edge ahead on dairy this week, the other on pantry staples, and it flips again next week depending on which specials are running. There's no stable "always cheaper" answer here, which means picking one supermarket and sticking with it out of habit isn't really a savings strategy at all — it's a coin flip that resets weekly.

The bigger, more consistent lever: home brands.

Swapping everyday items — pasta, canned goods, cleaning products, basics you're not emotionally attached to a specific brand for — to the supermarket's own label typically saves more than any amount of store-switching. It's not glamorous advice, but it's the one that actually holds up shop after shop, not just the week you happened to check.

The other real lever: Aldi, where it fits.

For households willing to add a third store into the mix, Aldi's pricing on a large chunk of everyday items tends to run meaningfully below both Woolworths and Coles. The tradeoff is real too — different brands, a different layout, not every product you're used to. Worth it for some households, not for others, which is exactly why it's a personal call rather than a blanket rule.

So what's the actual answer?

Not "switch supermarkets." It's closer to: know which of your regular items already have a good home-brand equivalent, know roughly where Aldi is worth the trip for your household, and stop assuming loyalty to one supermarket is either saving you money or costing you money — it's mostly doing neither.

This is exactly the gap SuperCarto is built to close. Instead of you tracking specials, home-brand swaps, and two stores' pricing by hand every week, it does the item-by-item check automatically and builds the basket for you — you just review it and approve.