The deal-hunt is back, and this time the receipts don't lie
We spent a month comparing the same baskets across every major retailer. The winners weren't the names you'd guess.
10 September 2026 · 6 min read
Deal season used to mean a week of discounts. It now runs more or less continuously, which makes the question harder: not where the discount is, but where the price is genuinely lower.
So we fixed a basket of twenty everyday items and bought it, in full, once a week at each retailer. No substitutions, no loyalty pricing, no vouchers.
The result
The cheapest retailer overall was not the one with the loudest discounting. It was the one with the fewest promotions, because its baseline prices moved least across the month.
- Promotional retailers had the widest week-to-week swing
- Own-brand staples were the deciding factor in every basket
- Delivery fees reversed the ranking for orders under €40
The honest conclusion: chasing individual deals cost more time than it saved money. Picking the right baseline retailer did the work instead.
Marta Visser
Consumer editor
Marta has covered retail pricing and consumer rights for nine years and runs our basket-tracking tests.
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