Aldi hammer ad campaign

Aldi came in cheapest for the first time since it beat Lidl by 1p a year ago

Aldi emerged as the cheapest retailer in our super Grocer 33, edging out its rival discounter Lidl by a mere 2p.

This is Aldi’s first victory since it undercut Lidl by just a penny exactly one year ago. Since then, Lidl has been cheapest on the three other occasions when we included both discounters.

Aldi offered the lowest price for 25 items and was exclusively cheapest for the ham & cheese rollitos and the spring onions. Lidl was cheapest for 24 products and exclusively so for the Domestos bleach.

Crucially, the discounters weren’t as far away from the rest of the pack as usual. A combination of everyday low pricing, Aldi Price Match and Clubcard Prices appears to be helping Tesco close the gap.

At £58.25, Tesco was £3.36 more expensive than Aldi – a difference of just 6.1%. Our shopping list at Tesco was 4.5% cheaper this week than it would have been in July 2023, whereas Aldi was just 0.7% cheaper and Lidl down 1%.

Tesco was also exclusively cheapest for the Nescafé coffee and the oranges.

Asda was 8.8% more expensive than Aldi, or £4.85. The gap was despite coming in exclusively cheapest for the Birds Eye peas, cling film, red peppers and the Richmond meat-free sausages.

Sainsbury’s was the cheapest retailer this week for the Knorr stock pots. However, it was £5.34 more expensive than Aldi overall. This was despite coming out 5.7% cheaper than 12 months ago.

Morrisons was almost a tenner more expensive than the discounters at £64.75, a difference of 17.9%. Waitrose, meanwhile, was even further off the pace at £73.25 – £18.36 more expensive than Aldi.

Neither of the two were exclusively cheapest for any of the items this week.