Original data
No Canadian grocery store is cheapest for everything
By CartIQ · We have read Canadian grocery flyers twice a week since April 2026 and keep every price we find, which is what makes this comparison possible.
Updated September 13, 2026 · 16 weeks of flyer data · 32 Canadian chains
Which store is cheapest for each grocery aisle?
Each row is one staple. A contest is a single region and week where at least four chains advertised that item, and the winner is whichever listed the lowest median price.
| Staple | Cheapest most often | Win rate | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🧀 Cheese | Walmart | 51% | No Frills |
| 🥣 Yogurt | Walmart | 47% | No Frills |
| 🍞 Bread | Walmart | 29% | No Frills |
| ☕ Coffee | Real Canadian Superstore | 23% | No Frills |
| 🍚 Rice | Walmart | 31% | Sobeys |
| 🍝 Pasta | Real Canadian Superstore | 29% | Walmart |
| 🐟 Salmon | Safeway | 19% | Metro |
| 🥔 Potatoes | Walmart | 28% | Sobeys |
| 🍗 Chicken breast | Adonis | 17% | Metro |
| 🥩 Ground beef | Walmart | 31% | FreshCo |
Win rate is the share of contests that chain led. Rates are well under 100% because a different chain wins most weeks, which is the point.
How often is each chain the cheapest?
Counted only when a chain actually competed, so operating in fewer regions does not penalise it.
| Chain | Cheapest | Contests |
|---|---|---|
| Walmart | 38% | 429 |
| No Frills | 28.7% | 237 |
| FreshCo | 18.9% | 201 |
| Food Basics | 17.9% | 162 |
| Real Canadian Superstore | 16.6% | 392 |
| Adonis | 16.4% | 201 |
| Super C | 11.5% | 157 |
| Maxi | 10.1% | 79 |
| Metro | 10% | 281 |
| Sobeys | 10% | 329 |
Why meat behaves differently
Fresh meat is the least predictable aisle we track. No chain wins chicken breast or ground beef consistently, and the leader changes week to week and by region.
That is not noise, it is the loss leader at work. Meat is what chains use to pull traffic, so they take turns advertising it below their usual margin. The practical consequence is that choosing a store for meat is close to pointless, while choosing the week is worth real money. Our price swings analysis found chicken breast moving more than 90% between its cheapest and dearest week.
How should this change where you shop?
If you only shop one store, the data says a large discount banner is the safest default, because it wins more aisles than anyone else. But the more useful reading is that splitting a shop across two stores captures most of the gap.
- Dairy and pantry: the most predictable aisles, where one chain leads consistently enough to be worth defaulting to.
- Meat and seafood: buy on the flyer, not at a favourite store. Nobody wins these reliably.
- Produce: thinly advertised compared to the rest, so it appears in fewer contests and is the weakest basis for choosing a store.
How we measured this
CartIQ reads the flyer feeds for 32Canadian grocery chains twice a week and stores every matching item with its price, merchant, region and capture time. For each region, week and staple where at least four chains advertised the item, we take each chain's median advertised price and record which came lowest. This page is generated from that database and rewrites itself as new weeks land.
Four limits worth stating plainly. These are advertised flyer prices, not shelf prices and not what anyone paid at the till. A win means the lowest advertised price for a staple category, not a like-for-like comparison of identical products, because package sizes differ between chains. Warehouse formats are excluded, since case sizes are not comparable to a retail unit. And items are matched to a staple by a classifier that deliberately rejects near-misses, so chocolate milk is not counted as milk.
Data runs from 2026-05-29 to 2026-09-13, covering 16 weeks and 54,206 classified price records.
Frequently asked questions
Which grocery store is cheapest for cheese in Canada?
Walmart, by a wide margin. Across our tracked weeks Walmart advertised the lowest price on cheese in about half of all contests, roughly four times as often as the next chain. No Frills is the most common runner-up. Dairy is where Walmart's advantage is largest.
Where is the cheapest place to buy coffee in Canada?
Real Canadian Superstore wins coffee more often than any other chain, with No Frills second. Coffee is one of the few aisles Walmart does not lead, and it is also one of the most volatile items in Canadian flyers, so the cheap week matters more than the store.
Is Walmart cheaper than No Frills for groceries?
More often than not, but not always, and it depends heavily on the aisle. Walmart advertises the lowest price in about 38 percent of head-to-head contests against roughly 29 percent for No Frills. Walmart's lead comes almost entirely from dairy and pantry; on fresh meat the gap closes and regional chains frequently win.
Does one grocery store win every category?
No, and that is the main finding. Walmart leads dairy and several pantry categories, Real Canadian Superstore takes coffee and pasta, Safeway leads salmon in the West, and fresh meat is genuinely contested with no chain winning consistently. Shopping one store for everything leaves money on the table.
Which store is cheapest for meat in Canada?
Meat is the least predictable aisle we track. No chain wins chicken breast or ground beef consistently, and the leaders change week to week and by region. That is because meat is the classic loss leader, so chains take turns advertising it below their usual margin to pull traffic.
How were these numbers calculated?
For every combination of region, week and staple where at least four chains advertised that item, we identify which chain listed the lowest median price. A chain's win rate is how often it came first across those contests. The figures update automatically as new flyer weeks are recorded.
Are these shelf prices or sale prices?
These are advertised flyer prices, which is what retailers publish each week. They are not shelf prices and not what any individual paid at checkout. A win means a chain advertised the lowest price for that staple category that week, not that its product was identical to a competitor's.
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Figures are median advertised prices from Canadian retailer flyers, generated live from CartIQ's price database. They are not shelf prices and vary by location and week. CartIQ is not affiliated with any retailer named on this page.