Price Check Australia – What Groceries Cost in Australia If You’re Self-Catering

Price Check Australia gives you an idea of what groceries cost in Australia if you’re travelling down under and self-catering – whether you’re settling into an apartment rental, holiday house or home-swap, hiring an RV, or camping and caravanning your way around Australia. A shopping list of essential groceries and their prices, Price Check launched when we launched Grantourismo in 2010.

With Australia’s summer high season soon starting and settling into apartments, home-swapping and #vanlife as popular as ever, as hotels and motels are so expensive, I thought I’d share a Price Check Australia to help those of you planning a trip to Australia and self-catering. Australia is an expensive destination, but the current exchange rate is on your side, and it can also be more affordable if you follow our budget travel tips in this Price Check Australia edition.

We began our Price Check series when we started our yearlong trip around the world dedicated to slow travel, local travel and experiential travel, more immersive, engaging and enriching ways of travelling back in January 2010. We were settling into places for two weeks at a time to live like locals, shopping local markets and supermarkets, and learning to cook local food.

We shared a Price Check post from every destination we settled into that could serve as a shopping list to stock the kitchen at the start of your stay, as well as give you an idea of what groceries cost. The list includes basic items to get you started plus a local specialty or two.

We used the same list for each place, so you could use it as a comparative tool, but when we diverged for whatever reason, we explained why in our notes and budget travel tips in the post. I’ve done the same in this Price Check Australia edition.

We also changed the local specialities for every destination, and I’ve done the same here. Obviously we don’t expect you to buy Vegemite everywhere, but you have to try the umami-loaded spread while you’re in Australia if you really want a taste of living like locals.

Price Check Australia – What Groceries Cost in Australia If You’re Self-Catering

There’s no denying that Australia is an expensive destination for foreign travellers with flights, local transport, sights, attractions, hotels, restaurants, cafes, and bars being some of the most expensive in the world. Australia is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis so Australia is also expensive for most Australians right now.

While there’s little that you can do about Australian restaurant and cafe prices, you can save considerable funds by self-catering, by staying in accommodation with a kitchen, such as holiday homes, apartment rentals, cabins, and caravans, and buying your own groceries and cooking your own food, even if it’s a couple of meals a day, and you eat one meal out.

But you’ll only save money if you shop at Aldi, the German supermarket chain that are Australia’s cheapest supermarkets. Do your shopping at the major supermarkets, Woolworths and Coles, or Australia’s most expensive supermarkets, IGA, a chain of independently-owned supermarkets, and you’ll be spending so much money on groceries that you’ll probably find cafe breakfasts to be more affordable.

Shop at Aldi, however, where prices are considerably lower than other supermarkets, and you’ll save an astonishing amount of money than you can spend on other essentials, such as transport and accommodation.

Even if you’re not self-catering and you’re staying in hotels, if you’re on a tight budget or slow travelling and stretching your funds over weeks or months, it’s still worth seeking out Aldi supermarkets to buy snacks, such as crackers, cheeses and charcuterie, mineral water and juices, and Australia’s most affordable beer and wine, although don’t expect more than quaffers.

Price Check Australia Methodology

I’ve used the same methodology for Price Check Australia that we’ve used since we launched the Price Check series way back in 2010. The shopping list below is the same shopping list we use for every destination.

The Price Check shopping list includes the essential products we typically buy at the start of a stay in an apartment or holiday rental, ingredients for breakfast, snacks, a meal or two each day, and drinks in the evening. See a sample Shopping List here.

During our 2010 Price Check series we bought similar quality products in each place, so our readers could easily make price comparisons between destinations. I’ve done the same with Price Check Australia.

At the end of our Price Check Australia trip some readers pointed out that we could have saved money by buying cheaper tea or coffee brands, for example, rather than name brands. But buying brands found all over the world provided a good yardstick for the series. And let’s face it, some people don’t want to sacrifice favourite products when they travel and prefer to pay extra for quality.

We always bought free-range eggs and organic products when available and I’ve done the same for Price Check Australia. This was a personal decision based on a sense of ethical responsibility as much as a desire to simply buy the best quality products, and nothing has changed. We think our like-minded readers are with us on this one.

Wherever we’ve travelled around the world, we’ve always shopped locally at independently owned supermarkets in the neighbourhoods where we’ve stayed, and we shopped around, visiting several supermarkets, markets and specialty shops in the vicinity, to ensure we were getting the best combination of price and quality.

Price Check Australia differs in that respect because there is very little choice in Australia with the major supermarkets (Woolworths, Coles and IGA) dominating the grocery retail space. You really need to seek out and make a beeline for your closest Aldi supermarket to save money.

The prices in the Price Check tables are the prices at the time we visited. To find out when that was, check the date of the post. In the case of this Price Check Australia shopping list, the prices were accurate on 16 October 2024.

I have used A$, $US and € for this Price Check Australia post and the currency exchange rates were sourced from www.xe.com.

If you have any questions, ask away in the Comments section below the post and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

Price Check Australia: A Grocery Shopping List

All prices below are based on Aldi supermarkets prices at the time of research and publication, except the bottle of Victoria Bitter, which is not available at Aldi and is based on the BWS price. Expect to pay significantly more for the same products at other supermarkets, shops and markets in Australia.

Price Check is a series of posts from every destination we visit where we settle in for a while, that could serve as a shopping list for you to stock the kitchen at the start of your stay, as well as a cost of living index, giving you an idea as to what things cost in that place. We include some basic items to get you started, plus a local specialty or two from the place.