Aldi dominates as guest 33 retailer with two-thirds of products cheapest

^{Note: This article was updated on 23 March to adjust the price of the plums at Asda to the standard tier; and to correct an inaccuracy in which the article had previously stated that Aldi was 52% cheaper than Waitrose, What we meant to say was that Waitrose was 52% more expensive than Aldi.}  

Aldi followed in the footsteps of rival discounter Lidl – as our guest discounter registered a convincing Grocer 33 pricing win for the second week running.

Offered the lowest price for 26 products (22 exclusively), Aldi’s £51.35 trolley was £7.68 cheaper than runner-up Asda. That makes Aldi 13% more expensive, a smidge more than Aldi’s last two guest slots in September and November, when Asda was 12.1% and 12.2% more expensive than Aldi. Last week Lidl was 11.8% cheaper than Asda.

Asda offered the lowest price for four products and was exclusively cheapest for the apples, kitchen towels and Nutella.

Aldi was 15% (£9.08) cheaper than third-place Sainsburys’, which was exclusively cheapest on the Foster’s lager (thanks to a £2 saving), and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, while matching Aldi on the pork mince.

And the £10.57 difference on the Morrisons basket meant Aldi was 17% cheaper12.. It offered one exclusively cheapest item – the frozen beef lasagne – and was a match on four items in total.

Despite its Aldi Price Match programme, Tesco was even further off the pace, managing fifth this time out – a placing not improved by factoring in its Clubcard Prices. Loyalty card holders would have saved just 45p this week, taking its total down from £64.25 to £63.80. This would still have been £12.45 more expensive than Aldi, a difference of 19.5%.

Waitrose was reassuringly expensive on its basket – charging £26.91 (or just over 50%) more than Aldi at £78.26. To put it another way, Aldi was about a third cheaper than Waitrose.

However, the Waitrose basket was just 0.1% pricier year on year, whereas inflation on the Aldi basket was 3.6%, as retailers kept a lid on inflation for this basket. Our shopping list was 0.9% cheaper than in February and just 3.6% more expensive than this time a year ago. Asda saw the biggest hikes, with prices up 7.5% year on year.