Woolworths Food prices versus Checkers and Pick n Pay

PriceCheck’s grocery basket revealed that Checkers has better average prices for popular food items than Pick n Pay and Woolworths.

PriceCheck has been a trusted consumer e-commerce platform since 2006 and is a leader in retail data intelligence in South Africa.

The company, founded by Kevin Tucker in 2006, has extensive data on product prices dating back years.

It used this intelligence to create a grocery basket of 29 items that most South Africans buy monthly.

The basket includes items most households use, like large eggs, sliced white bread, a whole chicken, coffee, maize meal, rice, margarine, and salt.

It also includes Ouma rusks, Clover Ultra long-life milk, cooking oil, virgin olive and seed oil, jam, Rooibos tea, regular tea, baked beans, and coffee.

The other items are instant oats, tomato and onion mix, pilchards, tomato sauce, Bovril, potatoes, onions, sugar, peanut butter, snacks, bacon, and fish fingers.

For this comparison, Checkers, Pick n Pay, and Woolworths were used as South Africa’s three largest retailers serving middle-class South Africans.

PriceCheck’s grocery basket research revealed that Checkers is the most affordable at R1,618 for the basket of products.

Pick n Pay finished second with a price of R1,676 for the basket of products, followed by Woolworths in distant third at R2,097.

The research further revealed that Woolworth’s prices increased significantly more than those of Checkers and Pick n Pay.

Between 2023 and 2025, Woolworths’s best price for products in the price basket increased by 25%.

This is much higher than the average food inflation in South Africa over the last two years, showing that Woolworths increased prices by more than expected.

Over the same period, Checkers’ best price for products in the price basket increased by 13%, which is in line with food inflation.

Pick n Pay had the lowest price increases over the period. Its best price for products in the basket increased by 7% between 2023 and 2025.

The table below provides an overview of how Checkers, Pick n Pay, and Woolworths compare on the PriceCheck food backet comparison.