Grocery Budget Calculator
What a weekly shop costs over a month and a year, per person and per meal.
A weekly shop is the most frequent spending decision a household makes and the least examined one. The total is never on a single receipt, and the annual figure is a number nobody has.
Enter what a normal week costs and how many people it feeds, and this calculator turns it into a monthly and yearly figure, a cost per person, a cost per meal, and the share of income it represents.
At a glance
- What you enter
- Weekly grocery spend, People in the household, Target spend per person, Eating out each month, Monthly income after tax
- What you get
- Monthly grocery spend, Monthly cost per person, Gap to your target, Food as a share of income, Food over a year, Cost per meal
- Formula shown
- Yes - every step, right below your results.
- Cost and privacy
- Free, no account needed, and nothing you type is stored.
See worked examples ↓ Read the FAQ ↓ Share this calculator ↓
Results are estimates for general information only - always verify with a professional or official source before acting on them.
How to use the Grocery Budget Calculator
- 1 Enter Weekly grocery spend - Food and household supplies bought in a normal week.
- 2 Enter People in the household (people)
- 3 Enter Target spend per person - Your own target, not an average. Set it from a month you were happy with.
- 4 Enter Eating out each month - Restaurants, takeaway and coffee, which come from a different budget line.
- 5 Enter Monthly income after tax
- 6 Press Calculate. You get Monthly grocery spend, Monthly cost per person, Gap to your target, Food as a share of income, Food over a year, Cost per meal, and every intermediate step stays visible under “How is this calculated?”
- 7 Change one number at a time to see what moves the result - that is usually the most useful thing a calculator can tell you.
Worked examples
Real numbers run through this calculator. Open any example to load it into the form above and change it.
A family of four spending 180 a week
A target of 150 a person, which the weekly shop is over.
You enter
- Weekly grocery spend
- $180.00
- People in the household
- 4 people
- Target spend per person
- $150.00
- Eating out each month
- $150.00
- Monthly income after tax
- $4,500.00
You get
- Monthly grocery spend
- $780.00
- Monthly cost per person
- $195.00
- Gap to your target
- -$180.00
- Food as a share of income
- 20.7%
- Food over a year
- $11,160.00
- Cost per meal
- $2.17
The shop is 780 a month and 9,360 a year, which is 195 a person and about 2.17 a meal. The household target is 600 a month, so the gap is 180 a month or 2,160 a year. Groceries and eating out together are 11,160 a year and take 20.7 percent of income.
A couple spending 120 a week and eating out often
A smaller shop per person and a much larger restaurant line.
You enter
- Weekly grocery spend
- $120.00
- People in the household
- 2 people
- Target spend per person
- $130.00
- Eating out each month
- $250.00
- Monthly income after tax
- $3,200.00
You get
- Monthly grocery spend
- $520.00
- Monthly cost per person
- $260.00
- Gap to your target
- -$260.00
- Food as a share of income
- 24.1%
- Food over a year
- $9,240.00
- Cost per meal
- $2.89
The shop is 520 a month, which is 260 a person against a target of 130, so the gap is 260 a month or 3,120 a year. Eating out of 250 a month is nearly half the grocery bill, and the two together are 9,240 a year, or 24.1 percent of income. The cost per meal is 2.89.
Guides that go with it
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Frequently asked questions
Why multiply by 52 and divide by 12 rather than use four weeks?
Because a month is about 4.33 weeks, not four. Using four weeks understates the yearly figure by eight percent, which is a whole month of shopping over a year and the most common way a grocery budget ends up wrong.
The weekly figure is the one most people actually know, because that is how the shopping happens. Converting it honestly is the whole job of the calculator.
What is a reasonable target per person?
There is no single answer, and the published averages are built from surveys with a very wide spread. A household that cooks from scratch, buys in season and wastes little can spend well under the average, and one that buys prepared food can spend several times it.
The target that works is your own: take a month where the spending felt comfortable and sustainable, divide it by the number of people, and use that. It is comparable with your own future months, which is what a target is for.
Do household supplies belong in the grocery budget?
They are usually in the same shop and on the same receipt, so most households include them. Cleaning products, toiletries and paper goods are not food, and their cost per meal figure is meaningless.
If the target is being used to control spending, keeping them in is fine and simpler. If it is being used to compare the cost of feeding a household, they should be taken out, because they do not scale with the number of meals cooked.
How do I bring the figure down without changing what we eat?
Three things work better than looking for cheaper items. Shopping fewer times, because each trip adds items that were not on the list. Planning meals around what is already in the fridge, because waste is food that has been paid for twice. And checking the unit price rather than the pack price, since the larger pack is not always the cheaper one per unit.
Meat and prepared food are the two lines where a substitution saves the most, and both can be reduced rather than removed. The cost per meal figure is the one that shows whether any of it worked.