is it worth the trip?

A cheaper store is only cheaper if the drive doesn't eat the saving. This tool weighs the whole cost of a shop — groceries + petrol + your time — at your nearest PAK'nSAVE, New World and Woolworths, and tells you if the cheaper store is worth the extra kilometres.

How it works

• We read the same shelf prices you'd see on each retailer's own public website — no login, no account, nothing behind a paywall.
• Prices refresh overnight, once a night, with light, well-spaced requests. We read politely and never hammer a site.
• When you drop a pin we find your nearest store of each chain, price the basket at each, add the return drive (your ¢/km) and your time (your $/hour), and compare the all-in totals.

How we compare fairly

• Identical products only — national brands matched on brand + exact pack size + name, compared on normalised $/unit ($/kg, $/L, each).
• Only items stocked at all three of your nearest stores are counted.
• Prices are what you'd pay at the till — specials included, Woolworths Club price where it applies.
• We never silently match house brands. Pams is not Woolworths' own brand. Where a staple only exists as each chain's own brand or fresh produce — milk, butter, eggs, meat, veg — we don't guess. We use the published equivalence table below, so you can see exactly what we treated as equivalent.

The equivalence table

Every product we compare is declared in the open — each chain's comparable line, its pack size, and the normalised price. The cheapest of the three is marked ★. National = the exact same brand at all three; House = each chain's own brand (e.g. Pams ↔ Woolworths); Commodity = fresh produce and meat by the kilo.

Everyday staples

Browse every comparison

Our principles

• Transparent — everything we compare is stated. If you can't see how a number was reached, we haven't done our job.
• Independent — no retailer pays us. These are factual public prices; we don't take a side.
• Polite — we read lightly and overnight, and respect the sites we rely on.
• Private — we use only an approximate location to centre your map; we don't need to know who you are.