We priced 11 everyday items; pasta, milk, eggs, cheese, toilet roll, bread, instant noodles, white wine, frozen peas, potatoes and chicken. On the websites of five supermarkets: M&S, Sainsbury’s, Co-op, Tesco and Aldi. At Aldi, the basket came to £19.43. At M&S, it cost £29.90.
For a student who does the same shop every week, the difference adds up to about £125 over a 12-week semester.
Aldi wins, Tesco second
Aldi was the cheapest overall at £19.43, followed by Tesco at £25.79, the Co-op at £27.00, Sainsbury’s at £28.95 and M&S at £29.90.
Aldi was the cheapest, or joint cheapest, place to buy seven of the 11 items. Even Tesco, its closest competitor, charged £6.36 more for the basket, roughly a third more than Aldi.
The biggest differences were on the everyday cupboard staples. A pack of noodles cost 39p at Aldi and Tesco, but £1.20 at M&S, more than three times as much. Eggs were 99p at Aldi and £2.45 at Sainsbury’s, almost two and a half times the price. A loaf of bread cost 55p at Aldi and £1.30 at the Co-op.
On other items, the prices were almost incomparable with, Milk costing 85p at four of the five shops and just one different of 10op with the Co-op coming in at 95p. The range between the shops was slight with chicken costing £4.62 at Sainsbury’s and £5.15 at the Co-op.
Aldi did not come out as the chepeast on every item. It was, surprisingly, the most expensive place to buy potatoes, charging £1.65 online compared to 85p at M&S’s online retailer Ocado. Tesco’s toilet roll was 7p cheaper than Aldi’s and Sainsbury’s pasta was 9p cheaper.
M&S and the Co-op were approached for comment but had not responded by the time of publication.
The wider issue
The Oxford results match what consumer group Which? finds across the country. Its monthy price comparison has named Aldi the cheapest supermarket every month of 2026 so far.
In October, Which?’s list of 87 items cost £154.34 at Aldi, £187.31 at Tesco and £191.56 at Sainsbury’s, without loyalty cards. That puts Tesco about a fifth more expensive than Aldi nationally. In our smaller student basket, the gap was closer to a third.
The difference is likely to be about what is in the basket. Our list is made up of cheap staples plus wine, which we see as a likely student purchase, where the difference in price often comes down to a few pence. Which? also does not include M&S or the Co-op, two shops many Oxford students rely on. So it would be unfair to directly compare our results to theirs.
Location and Convinience
Knowing where it’s cheapest is one thing. Getting there is another.
Oxford’s two Aldi stores are both on retail parks away from student areas, on Botley Road in west Oxford and Horspath Driftway in Cowley. In Headington and Cowley Road you are more likely to find a Co-op, a Tesco Express or a Sainsbury’s Local, according to Oxford Brookes University's Hall Guide.
This is a problem for students in Oxford, as the Co-op was the most expensive shop for six of our 11 items, including bread, cheese, milk, toilet roll and chicken. Our Tesco and Sainsbury’s prices were taken online, so prices in their smaller convenience branches may differ.
For students without a car, to get the cheapest basket at Aldi also means a bus journey or a longer trip. Bus fares cost between £1.80 and £2.50, and the walk from Aldi on Horspath Driftway to Headington campus takes about 39 minutes. Even having a bike (which is common for Oxford students) doesn’t help this issue as they will be carrying heavy bags of shopping.
“It’s challenging to find a cheaper shop close by especially with no car, so I end up spending significantly more than I’d like to” says Harvey, 20, a third-year student at Oxford Brookes
Loyalty cards
Loyalty schemes can narrow the gap. In October, Which? found 18 products on loyalty discount at Tesco bringing its list down from £187.31 to £181.77 with Clubcard. Our prices exclude loyalty card discounts, so a student with a Clubcard or Nectar card may pay slightly less than our figures suggest at Tesco or Sainsbury’s, or anywhere that offers some sort of loyalty scheme.
Student budget
These findings come as students say they are still struggling with cost of living prices. Save the Student's National Money Survey 2026 found that respondents spent an average of £155 a month on their food shop. The maintenance loan students get fell £467 a month short of their total spending.
The same survey found that 63% of students skip meals at least some of the time to save money. Its sample is self-selecting, so it may over-represent students who are struggling.
Against the £36 a week the average student in the survey spends on food, the gap between our cheapest and most expensive basket is significant. At Aldi, our basket takes up just over half of that budget. At M&S, it takes up more than four-fifths.
Our suggestion on how to spend less
Based on our figures, Aldi gives the cheapest basket by a clear margin. If getting there is impractical, Tesco is the next best choice, and was within 10p of Aldi on pasta, milk, toilet roll, noodles and frozen peas.
No shop was the cheapest for every item based on our findings, so, comparing prices item by item can save a little more. A planned trip to a big shop once a week may also cost less than several little top-ups at the nearest convenience shop.
How we did it
We compared the online prices of 11 items at M&S, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Co-op and Aldi on 21 October 2026, using own-brand items where available and excluding loyalty card discounts and multi-buy offers. The full data and analysis are available in our spreadsheet.