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Food price inflation tracker: what's happening to grocery costs at the supermarket?
Which?'s groundbreaking supermarket inflation tracker reveals the supermarkets – and types of food and drink – with the fastest-rising prices.
Overall, inflation is starting to creep up again. It had dipped after reaching one of its highest levels in more than 40 years during the height of the cost of living crisis, but is now back on the rise, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Food price inflation is also creeping back up again, and it's still higher than the overall level of inflation.
Ours was the first publicly available tracker to focus solely on supermarket food and drink price inflation. We still run it regularly, analysing tens of thousands of prices to reveal:
- which supermarkets have the highest and lowest inflation
- which types of food and drink are rising in price the fastest
- how branded groceries compare with own-label ones
- whether budget ranges or more premium products are going up faster in price.
Our tracker looks at 20 popular categories of food and drink at eight supermarkets: Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. It compares prices across the same three-month and one-month periods year-on-year, including discounts but not multibuys or loyalty card offers. We weight the figures based on supermarket market share and the sales volume of each product category.
Food inflation in 2025
Annual inflation for supermarket food and drink in our tracker has risen again – to 5.4% in the three months to the end of August 2025. That's up from 4.6% in May and 4.1% in February. It's still significantly lower than its peak of 17% in the three months to the end of April 2023, however.
Looking at a shorter one-month period, annual inflation stayed the same, at 5.2% in August.
This graph shows how food price inflation has changed over the past two years:
Source: Which? Supermarket Inflation Tracker. Inflation is annual, based on three-month periods compared with the same time a year earlier. The number of products included each month varies between around 23,000 and 28,000. Tracker moved from running monthly to once every three months from December 2023.
Two-year inflation
It's worth bearing in mind that last year, prices were already substantially higher than they were the year or even two years before that.
For example, food prices in the three months to the end of August 2024 were 16.6% higher than they were in the same period in 2022 – but 2.4% higher year-on-year (compared to 2023).
- Find out more: how to spend less at the supermarket
Which supermarket has the fastest-rising prices?
The latest figures show that products at Morrisons have the highest levels of inflation, with prices up 6% year-on-year in the month of August. It was followed by Tesco at 5.7%. Products at Asda had the lowest inflation, at 4.4%.
| Supermarket | Annual inflation for the three months to end August 2025 | Annual inflation for the month of August 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Morrisons | 6.2% | 6.0% |
| Tesco | 5.8% | 5.7% |
| Lidl | 5.8% | 5.6% |
| Sainsbury's | 5.1% | 5.0% |
| Ocado | 4.6% | 4.7% |
| Waitrose | 4.4% | 4.7% |
| Aldi | 5.5% | 4.6% |
Source: Which? Supermarket Inflation Tracker. The three-month figure may be more robust as it covers a longer time period, however, the one-month figure reflects recent changes in inflation more clearly.
This graph shows annual inflation based on three-month periods at each supermarket:
Remember, inflation is a measure of how quickly prices are rising or falling and not of absolute price. The supermarkets with the highest inflation may also be the cheapest.
- Find out more: which is the cheapest supermarket this month?
Which food types have the highest inflation?
Chocolate prices again rose fastest of all 20 categories in our research, followed by butters/spreads and biscuits. Cereals and vegetables have the lowest inflation, but all categories are more expensive than in the month of August last year, on average.
| Type of food or drink | Annual inflation for the three months to the end of August 2025 | Annual inflation for the month of August 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Chocolate | 16.7% | 14.6% |
| Butters and spreads | 9.9% | 10.0% |
| Biscuits | 9.2% | 8.4% |
| Cakes and cookies | 7.5% | 7.2% |
| Meat | 5.4% | 5.5% |
| Chilled ready meals | 5.0% | 5.2% |
| Energy drinks | 6.0% | 5.2% |
Source: Which? Supermarket Inflation Tracker. The three-month figure may be more robust as it covers a longer time period, however, the one-month figure will reflect recent changes in inflation more clearly.
This graph shows annual inflation based on three-month periods for five of the categories that originally had the highest inflation:
Are branded or own-label groceries worse for inflation?
Currently, premium-range own-label food and drink has the highest rate of inflation compared with other ranges, as prices are up 8.6% year-on-year in the month of August.
| Range of groceries | Annual inflation for the three months to the end of August 2025 | Annual inflation for the month of August 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Own-label premium | 8.4% | 8.6% |
| Own-label standard | 5.7% | 5.5% |
| Branded | 5.7% | 5.4% |
| Own-label budget | 5.4% | 5.2% |
Source: Which? Supermarket Inflation Tracker. The three-month figure may be more robust as it covers a longer time period, however, the one-month figure will reflect recent changes in inflation more clearly.
Here are the results displayed visually based on three-month figures, over a longer period of time:
Why are food prices rising?
Food prices have been rising for a variety of reasons.
Prices for feed, fertiliser and fuel – which are all needed to produce food and drink – rose dramatically due to the war in Ukraine.
This was coupled with the knock-on effects of disruption during the pandemic, as well as spiralling energy and labour costs. Poor harvests in Europe and North and West Africa may also have had an effect. For example, the production of cocoa and sugar has been hit by poor weather, disease and a decline in the number of farmers.
More recently, some people have also blamed rises in employers' National Insurance Contributions and the minimum wage.