US Staple Grocery Prices: Weekly Price Tracker
Updated October 19, 2026. Updated weekly.
This page tracks a fixed basket of 14 staple groceries in the United States: milk, eggs, butter, bread, chicken breast, ground beef, rice, potatoes, bananas, coffee, cheddar, yogurt, spaghetti, and onions. Same items, same sizes, checked every week, so the changes you see are real price changes and not a different basket.
Two stores gave us near-complete baskets from their own online listings: Target and H-E-B. Walmart and Kroger publish far fewer checkable prices, and this page says exactly what we could and could not verify there rather than filling gaps with estimates. Online list prices can differ from your local shelf price, and prices vary by region, especially at H-E-B (Texas) and Kroger banners.
The basket at Target, October 19, 2026
Milk, Good & Gather whole, 1 gallon: $2.99.
Eggs, Good & Gather Grade A large, 12 count: $1.49.
Butter, Good & Gather European style salted, 8 oz: $3.29.
White bread, Market Pantry sandwich bread, 20 oz loaf: $1.69.
Chicken breast, Good & Gather fresh boneless skinless: $3.99 per pound.
Ground beef, Good & Gather 80/20, 1 lb pack: $7.39.
Russet potatoes, 5 lb bag: $2.99.
Ground coffee, Good & Gather Breakfast Blend, 12 oz: $8.99.
Cheddar cheese, Good & Gather sharp block, 8 oz: $1.89.
Plain yogurt, Good & Gather Greek plain nonfat, 32 oz: $3.29.
Spaghetti, Good & Gather, 16 oz: $1.29.
Yellow onions, Good & Gather, 3 lb bag: $2.99.
Subtotal for these 12 items: $42.28, counting chicken and ground beef at 1 pound each.
Two basket items do not price the same way at Target. Long grain white rice is sold in several sizes listed as a single price range, $0.89 to $6.89, and we could not isolate the exact 4 lb price, so we do not publish one. Bananas are sold per piece at $0.29 each, not per pound.
The basket at H-E-B, October 19, 2026
Milk, H-E-B whole, 1 gallon: $3.86. The Hill Country Fare gallon was listed at $3.46.
Eggs, Hill Country Fare Grade A large, 12 count: $1.67.
Butter, Land O'Lakes Salted Butter Balls, 8 oz: $3.97. This was the least recently refreshed listing we used this week; it is the only 8 oz salted butter price H-E-B publishes.
White bread, Hill Country Fare thin sliced, 20 oz loaf: $0.98.
Chicken breast, Hill Country Fare boneless skinless: $3.49 per pound.
Ground beef, Hill Country Fare 80% lean, 1 lb: $5.99. H-E-B's weekly ad for October 14 to 20, 2026 has the Texas-Size Pack at $4.49 per pound.
Russet potatoes, H-E-B Texas Roots, 5 lb bag: $2.97.
Bananas: $0.36 per pound.
Ground coffee, CAFE Ole by H-E-B, 12 oz: $8.98.
Cheddar cheese, Kraft sharp block, 8 oz: $2.98. Hill Country Fare sharp cheddar, 8 oz, was listed at $1.87, with the package form not specified.
Plain yogurt, Dannon whole milk plain, 32 oz: $3.56.
Spaghetti, H-E-B Organics, 16 oz: $1.78. H-E-B Thin Spaghetti, 16 oz, was listed at $1.12.
Yellow onions, 3 lb bag: $2.82.
Subtotal for these 13 items: $43.41, counting chicken, ground beef, and bananas at 1 pound each. The missing item is rice: H-E-B does not list a priced 4 lb long grain white rice bag online, so the basket cannot be completed there either.
On the 12 items priced the same way at both stores, Target totaled $42.28 and H-E-B totaled $43.05. Each store won six items. The full head-to-head is in our store comparison, linked below.
What we could verify at Walmart and Kroger
Walmart: walmart.com does not expose most regular grocery prices to outside checking, and the older listings we found conflict with each other, so we publish only what we verified fresh on October 19: bananas at $0.50 per pound, and frozen Great Value boneless skinless chicken breast at $3.28 per pound (3 lb frozen bag, $9.84). A Great Value long grain rice 5 lb bag was listed at $3.52 through Walmart's Instacart storefront; that is an Instacart-listed price, not a walmart.com price.
Kroger prices vary by banner and region, and kroger.com product prices are only partly visible from outside. Verified on banner sites: a gallon of Kroger whole milk at $3.39 regular price at Dillons, Land O'Lakes butter half sticks, 8 oz, at $2.99 at Smith's, and a 3 lb bag of Kroger yellow onions at $2.89 at QFC.
Kroger's weekly ad for October 14 to 20, 2026 is stronger than its regular listings: gallon milk at $2.49 (limit 5, Saturday to Monday, Southeast region), Fred Meyer gallons at $2.79 (limit 2, Saturday to Monday), and Heritage Farm boneless chicken breast at $1.99 per pound. Ad prices are sale prices for that week and region, not regular prices.
Aldi does not publish checkable prices on aldi.us. A third-party in-store price check published by FinanceBuzz in mid-October 2026 found Aldi bananas at $0.49 per pound, 80/20 ground beef at $5.29 per pound, Happy Farms sharp cheddar block, 8 oz, at $1.95, and Friendly Farms plain nonfat Greek yogurt, 32 oz, at $2.79. Those are one publication's in-store observations, not Aldi-published prices, and we label them that way wherever we use them.
Same item, different price this week
Milk: $2.99 a gallon regular at Target, $3.39 at Dillons (Kroger banner), $3.86 at H-E-B, and $2.49 in Kroger's weekend ad. The BLS national average for September 2026 was $4.11 a gallon, above every price we verified this week.
Eggs: $1.49 a dozen at Target and $1.67 at H-E-B, against a BLS September average of $2.27 a dozen. Store brand eggs are running well under the national average right now.
Ground beef: $5.99 a pound regular at H-E-B and $7.39 at Target, with Albertsons and Safeway advertising 80/20 at $3.99 a pound this week with a digital coupon. The BLS average for ground beef was $6.79 a pound in September.
Bread: $0.98 for a 20 oz store brand loaf at H-E-B against $1.69 at Target. Bread is a small item with a big percentage gap, and it is the single largest per-item percentage difference in this week's basket.
How we collect these prices
Prices checked Monday, October 19, 2026, from retailer online listings (target.com, heb.com, and Kroger banner sites including dillons.com, smithsfoodanddrug.com, and qfc.com), current weekly ads for the ad weeks covering October 19, and the BLS Average Price series for September 2026. Regular prices are the retailer's online list price on the check date. Anything from a weekly ad is labeled as an ad price with its dates.
The basket never changes size or item to make a week look better. If an item cannot be verified, we say so on this page. This week that was the exact 4 lb rice price everywhere, and most regular prices at Walmart and Kroger.
National context: the BLS food at home index rose 1.8% year over year in September 2026. This tracker shows the shelf-level version of that story.
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