$118.47 on the app. $101.36 on the shelf.
That's the same 31 Aldi items, bought once through Instacart and priced once in person with a pen, and the difference is why I canceled our Instacart+ free trial on August 21, before it ever charged us a cent.
Why I tried it at all
On August 8, the Friday before school started, I signed up for two free trials on the same afternoon: Walmart+ and Instacart+. With office days on Tuesdays and Thursdays and three kids heading into a new school year, I wanted to know whether delivery could replace my Monday morning Aldi run with Rosie in the cart. Around here, Aldi delivers through Instacart.
On Monday, August 18, instead of loading Rosie into the van, I placed our weekly Aldi order in the app. Thirty-one items: our usual staples plus a few pounds of meat to keep restocking the new freezer. It showed up on the porch that afternoon, and the shopper did a careful job. The produce was good, the eggs were whole, and the only substitution was loose onions instead of a 3-pound bag, which was fine.
Two days later, Rosie and I went to Aldi anyway, with the Instacart receipt folded in my back pocket. I walked every aisle and wrote the shelf price next to each line. None of the 31 items had a sale tag that week, and Aldi's prices barely move from one week to the next, so it was as close to a fair test as I could manage.
What the gap looked like
A few lines from the receipt, app price first:
- Milk, one gallon: $3.29 vs. $2.79
- Eggs, one dozen large: $3.39 vs. $2.89
- Ground beef 80/20, one pound: $6.75 vs. $5.79
- Shredded cheddar, 8 ounces: $2.49 vs. $2.15
- Flour tortillas, 10 count: $2.19 vs. $1.89
- Bananas, about two pounds: $0.69 vs. $0.58
Nearly every line was 15 to 20 percent higher in the app. Because the percentage stayed fairly steady, the meat and cheese lines hurt the most in actual dollars. Across all 31 items, the app total was $17.11 higher, about 17 percent, before a single fee.
Then come the fees. With the trial, delivery itself was free on an order that size, but there was still a service fee of $5.88, and I tipped the shopper $8. The delivered total came to $132.35, or $30.99 more than walking in myself. That's about 31 percent.
The app does say prices may differ from the store. I just didn't know by how much until I was standing in the cereal aisle with a pen.
Why I canceled, and what I kept
About $31 a week works out to roughly $130 a month if I used it for every Aldi run. For context, our grocery budget is $250 a week, and the summer creep I wrote about in July came to about $23 a week. Paying more than that, every week, just for delivery didn't make sense for our family, so I canceled the next day.
The Walmart+ trial has gone differently so far. On the items I've spot-checked, the app prices have matched the shelf at our Neighborhood Market, and delivery is free on orders over $35. It's been handy for heavy things like extra milk, paper towels and a 40-pound bag of dog food for Biscuit. That trial converts in September, and I'll share the numbers once it does.
To be fair to Instacart, on a sick week, or a week when the van is in the shop, $31 might be a perfectly reasonable price for two hours of my life back. That's a judgment every family makes with its own numbers and its own week. For our midweek gaps, Kroger pickup has never charged me more than $4.95 and is often free with a promo, so that's where those orders go.
Monday at nine, Rosie and I will be back at Aldi with a quarter for the cart, and she'll point at the bananas like she discovered them.
