Forty-one deliveries. That's how many times a Walmart driver pulled into our driveway between August 8, 2025, when I started a back-to-school free trial, and this week, when our first full year of Walmart+ wrapped up. Biscuit has met most of them. He has a favorite, an older man in a ball cap who keeps a dog biscuit in his shirt pocket for him, which I suspect is against some policy and which I will never report.
I wrote last September about why we kept paying after the trial. Now there's a year of receipts in the spreadsheet, so here's the full math, including the parts that are easy to leave out.
What we paid
- Membership: $149.80. Four monthly payments of $12.95 from September through December ($51.80), then the $98 annual plan, which I switched to on January 7. The annual price works out to about $8.17 a month instead of $12.95.
- Tips: $246 across 41 deliveries, about $6 each. A little more for dog food or a case of water carried up the driveway in the heat, a little less for a small order on a mild day.
- Delivery fees: $0. Every order cleared the $35 minimum for free delivery with the membership.
- Fuel discount: about $14 saved at the pump over the year.
So the service itself cost us $149.80 plus $246, minus $14, or $381.80 for the year. The groceries are separate, and they'd have cost about the same in the store.
The thing that surprised me when I added it up: the tips cost more than the membership. That's the number I'd want to see if I were deciding, so it goes right up front. I don't regret a dollar of it. People carried 40-pound bags of dog food up our driveway in 104-degree heat.
What we ordered
Forty-one orders is a little more than three a month, which is about what I guessed after the trial. Our main shop is still Aldi on Monday mornings with Rosie in the cart, and Kroger pickup still covers midweek gaps. Walmart delivery is for the heavy and the boring: paper towels, toilet paper, trash bags, detergent, extra milk, cases of water for the football cooler, lunchbox snacks in sizes Aldi doesn't carry, and Biscuit's food, which goes on the pet line of the spreadsheet. Our average order was about $68.
What we saved, honestly estimated
The membership doesn't make any single item cheaper. App prices have matched the shelf at our Neighborhood Market every time I've spot-checked, which is more than I could say for ordering Aldi groceries through Instacart last summer. The savings come from the cart I don't push. Comparing the year's delivery receipts with the in-store trips they replaced, I estimate we spend $25 to $35 a month less on impulse buys: the end-cap cookies, the "since I'm here" candle, whatever Eli spots at eye level. That's $300 to $420 over a year. It's an estimate, not a receipt, and I want to be clear about that.
Next to $381.80, the money comes out about even. The real return is time. I figure it saves me about an hour and a half a week, mostly by not taking three kids through a second store, which over a year is something like 78 hours.
The streaming perk? We've used it maybe four times. If it disappeared tomorrow, I'm not sure anyone in the house would notice.
What I'd tell myself a year ago
- The $35 minimum has a quiet cost. A handful of times I tossed in a second pack of paper towels or a bag of chips to clear the line. Nothing went to waste, but none of it was on my list either.
- Turn off substitutions for anything a picky eater depends on. Our very first order brought the wrong Goldfish, and Eli still brings it up.
- Don't order ice cream for a 4 p.m. delivery in August. One tub arrived soft. The refund came through in about a minute, but it was still soup.
- Count the tips. A membership looks cheap until you add them in.
So was it worth it? For us, yes, mostly for the time. That's our math with our stores, our schedule and our kids, and I can easily picture a family with a Walmart around the corner, or one that enjoys the shopping, landing on the opposite answer. The annual plan renews in January, and I'll run these numbers again before it does.
Tonight's order is already in: paper towels, two gallons of milk, a bag of dog food and a number-3 birthday candle for Saturday.
