Every night we read the shelf price of every product at every PAK'nSAVE, New World and Woolworths in New Zealand. Once a month we sit down with the whole series and write up what it says: how far apart the chains really are on identical products, which prices rose and fell, what the staples did, and how much it matters which store you walk into.
Reports
- September 2026. The PAK'nSAVE vs Woolworths gap narrowed by a point, to about nine percent, and specials did it rather than shelf tags. Frozen food and household goods rose at the Foodstuffs stores, spring cut tomatoes and asparagus, baby food and nappies got cheaper at PAK'nSAVE, and two litres of milk is now two cents cheaper at Woolworths than at PAK'nSAVE.
- August 2026. The PAK'nSAVE vs Woolworths gap held at about ten percent, regular prices barely moved, butter fell, bread got a little cheaper everywhere at once, and the South Island turned out to be the expensive PAK'nSAVE.
How to read them
- Like-for-like only. The chain comparison uses identical products: same brand, same pack size, compared per unit. Own brands are never silently substituted for each other. The full list of matched pairs is on the how it works page.
- Till prices. Figures include specials and Woolworths Club prices, because that is what you pay. Where a section says "regular price" it has excluded anything on special on the dates compared.
- Reproducible. Every number comes from one script run against the price database, and the raw retailer responses are kept, so any figure can be re-derived or cut another way.
- Independent. No retailer pays us, and no retailer is told about a report before it goes up.
For today's prices at your own nearest stores, use the comparison; for the cheapest of a particular thing right now, the cheapest-in-NZ pages.
Built by Iterate
We're Iterate, practical technology for New Zealand small businesses. Journalists and researchers are welcome to quote these reports with a link; if you need a figure checked or a different cut of the data, ask.
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