United States

The United States has one of the widest price spreads of any market on CostMyMeal, and it's mostly a story of store positioning rather than geography: Walmart, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods sit at three very different points on the same shelf, all priced in USD. A big-box discounter, a small-format specialty grocer, and a premium organic-leaning chain can charge noticeably different prices for the same basic item — eggs, milk, chicken — well before you even get to specialty ingredients.

Grocery shopping in the US is largely car-based and bulk-oriented; larger pack sizes are the norm, and shoppers who split purchases across multiple stores (discount chain for staples, specialty store for produce or cheese) can meaningfully undercut a single-store weekly shop. Sales tax on groceries also varies by state — many exempt basic food items entirely — which this calculator doesn't model, so treat the totals here as pre-tax comparisons.

Utilities are cheap by global standards: 0.16 USD/kWh for electricity and 0.05 USD/kWh-equivalent for gas mean the cooking method (boil vs. fry vs. bake) moves the total bill less here than in higher-utility-cost countries — ingredients, not energy, dominate the US cost breakdown for almost every dish.

Use the dish grid below to see how far a recipe's price swings between the discount chain and the premium one — it's usually the single biggest lever available to a US home cook.