Grocery Budget Calculator
Who eats in your house, and what you spend now
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning estimate only. Enter complete, current figures and keep an appropriate buffer for irregular or unexpected expenses.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Count the people who eat in your house by age band: men 20 to 50, women 20 to 50, adults 51 and over, ages 12 to 19, children 6 to 11, children 1 to 5. USDA prices food by age and sex, so this is the whole input.
- 02
Enter what you spend on groceries now, per month. Three months of card statements beats a guess — one big-shop month distorts a single-month sample badly.
- 03
Add what you spend eating out and on delivery. None of the USDA plans covers a restaurant meal, so this stays a separate line rather than being folded into the budget.
- 04
Read the Thrifty headline against the Liberal figure in the hint. Those two are the range, and the four plans are all nutritionally adequate — they differ in convenience, variety and cut of meat, not in whether they feed you.
- 05
Open Advanced options if a band does not fit your household — the per-person figures are editable and each label names the published alternatives — or use the adjustment field to roll every USDA figure forward to a later month or down to local prices.
Formula
For each plan: add up (people in the band × the per-person monthly cost for that band) across the six age bands, then apply ONE household-size adjustment to the total — 1.20 for a single person, 1.10 for two, 1.05 for three, 1.00 for four, 0.95 for five or six, 0.90 for seven or more. The order is USDA's own: sum first, adjust second. The result is multiplied by any price adjustment you enter. Weekly cost = monthly ÷ 4.333, the conversion USDA itself uses. Per person per day = the monthly total ÷ people ÷ 30.4.
Example
A family of four — one man aged 20 to 50, one woman aged 20 to 50, one child aged 6 to 11 and one child aged 1 to 5. On the Thrifty plan that is $319.20 + $253.90 + $209.60 + $172.90 = $955.60, and because four is the size USDA prices against, no size adjustment applies: $956 a month, or $221 a week, or $7.86 per person per day. The same household runs $1,030 on Low-Cost, $1,248 on Moderate-Cost and $1,527 on Liberal — the Liberal plan is 60% more food money than Thrifty for exactly the same four people. A household spending $1,100 sits between the Low-Cost and Moderate-Cost plans, $144 a month above Thrifty, or $1,733 a year. Add $320 of eating out and total food is $1,420 a month, of which the USDA plans have an opinion about $1,100 and no opinion at all about the rest.
Definitions
- Thrifty Food Plan
- The cheapest of the four USDA plans and the basis of SNAP allotments. Re-evaluated in 2021 on 2013-16 consumption and 2015-16 price data, then CPI-updated monthly — the only one of the four rebuilt this decade.
- Household-size adjustment
- USDA's own correction for the fact that its per-person costs are priced for a four-person household. Smaller households add 20%, 10% or 5% per head; larger ones subtract 5% or 10%. Applied once, to the summed total.
- Cost level
- The month whose prices the figures carry. USDA CPI-updates the same market basket every month, so the July 2026 cost level is current prices applied to a basket fixed years earlier.
- Food at home
- Groceries you cook and eat at home — the only thing the USDA plans measure. Restaurants, delivery, work canteens and coffee are all food away from home and sit outside every plan.
Good to know
Four national food budgets, and why you see all four
USDA publishes four food plans — Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal — as a cost per person per month by age and sex, updated every month for prices. All four are nutritionally adequate. They differ in how much convenience food, variety and expensive protein they assume, not in whether they feed you, and the spread between the cheapest and the dearest is large: for a family of four with two young-ish children, $956 a month on Thrifty against $1,527 on Liberal, sixty percent more money for the same four people. Thrifty is the strictest, is the legal basis of SNAP benefit amounts, and is the only one of the four whose market basket has been re-evaluated this decade, which is why it carries the headline here. But none of the four is a target. Read them as a range and find where you already are. A household spending at the Liberal level is not overspending — it is buying convenience, pre-cut vegetables, more meat and fewer beans, all of which are real things to buy. A household under Thrifty is either shopping extremely well or eating less than the plan assumes, and it is worth knowing which. This page computes all four on every render rather than asking you to choose one, partly because the choice is genuinely hard to make in advance and partly because the calculator's fields are numeric only and a plan level is a categorical choice it cannot key on. That constraint turned out to be an improvement.
Age is the axis, and sex is the one it cannot ask
Food cost tracks appetite, and appetite tracks age far more sharply than most budgets allow for. On the Thrifty plan a child aged 2 to 3 is priced at $172.90 a month and a boy aged 14 to 19 at $326.70 — nearly double, for the same household five or ten years later. A family that set its grocery budget when the children were small and never revisited it is not overspending when the teenagers arrive; it is underestimating by a couple of hundred dollars a month. That is why this page asks for a count in each age band rather than a household size, and why a household-size figure alone can never be right. Sex matters too, and here the engine hits a wall: a man aged 20 to 50 is priced at $319.20 and a woman at $253.90, a $65 gap too large to blend away, but sex is a categorical field kind this calculator does not have. So the two adult bands where the gap is widest are split into separate counts, and everywhere else the per-person field opens on one figure USDA actually publishes with the alternatives named in its own label. The 12-to-19 band opens on $260.50, the published cost for a girl aged 14 to 19, and its label names $326.70 for a boy and $224.40 and $258.90 for the 12-to-13 cells. Correcting a band is one edit, and it is far more honest than an average nobody published.
Why one person pays more per head, not less
The single most counterintuitive rule in the USDA plans is that they price food for a person living in a FOUR-person household, and then adjust for households that are not that size — upward for smaller ones. One person adds 20 percent to the per-head cost, two add 10 percent, three add 5 percent, four is the baseline, five or six subtract 5 percent, and seven or more subtract 10 percent. The adjustment is applied once, to the summed total, after every individual cost has been added up: the order is USDA's own and reversing it gives a different answer. The reason is a real economy of scale that anyone who has cooked for one already knows. A bag of flour, a jar of sauce, a bunch of herbs and a bag of onions do not shrink because fewer people live in the house, so a single person either buys the same package and throws part of it away, or buys smaller packages at a worse price per ounce, or eats the same thing five nights running. Bulk pricing, recipe minimums and spoilage all push the same way. The practical consequence is that a single person budgeting at a quarter of a family-of-four figure will be short by roughly a fifth, and a large household budgeting at a straight per-head multiple will over-provide by a tenth. Both are common mistakes, and both are avoidable by letting the size adjustment do its job.
What the plans assume, and where they are old
Every USDA food plan assumes one thing above all others: that every meal and every snack is prepared and eaten at home. There is no allowance in any of the four for a restaurant meal, a delivery order, a work canteen or a coffee — which is why this page keeps eating out in its own field and reports total food separately. For scale, the average US household splits food roughly $519 at home against $329 away from home each month, so a household that eats out normally will find its total food spending sits far above even the Liberal plan while its grocery line sits comfortably inside Thrifty. That is not a contradiction; it is two different budgets. The other thing to hold onto is the vintage, which has two layers. The price level is genuinely current — July 2026, issued in August, refreshed monthly about a month in arrears, which makes it the freshest benchmark on this site. The market baskets underneath are not. Thrifty rests on the 2021 re-evaluation, built on 2013-16 consumption and 2015-16 price data. Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal still rest on 2001-02 consumption data keyed to the 1997-2005 Dietary Reference Intakes and the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, CPI-updated ever since. USDA has said the 2021 re-evaluation begins the process of addressing the other three; it has not finished. Use the adjustment field to move all four for a later month, a later basket, or the prices where you actually shop.
Frequently asked questions
What are the USDA Food Plans?
Four national food budgets at four price levels — Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal — published monthly by USDA as a cost per person by age and sex. All four are nutritionally adequate; they differ in how much convenience food, variety and expensive protein they assume. Thrifty is the strictest and is the basis of SNAP benefit amounts. All four assume every meal and snack is prepared and eaten at home.
Which plan should I aim at?
None of them, exactly. Read the four as a range: a household at the Liberal level is buying convenience rather than overspending, and a household below Thrifty is either shopping extremely well or eating less than the plan assumes. The useful question is which of the four your current spending already sits on, which this page answers without asking you to pick one.
Why does a smaller household cost MORE per person?
Because the published per-person figures are priced for someone living in a four-person household, and USDA then applies a size adjustment: one person adds 20%, two add 10%, three add 5%, four is the baseline, five or six subtract 5%, and seven or more subtract 10%. It is a real economy of scale — a bag of flour, a jar of sauce and a bunch of herbs do not shrink because fewer people live there, and a single person throws more of them away.
Why is there no dropdown to pick a plan?
Because this calculator's fields are numeric only, and a plan level is a categorical choice it cannot key on. That turned out to be an improvement: the page computes all four on every render and shows them side by side, so you see the whole range instead of one number whose provenance you would have to remember choosing.
How current are these prices?
The cost level is July 2026, issued August 2026, and USDA refreshes it monthly about a month in arrears — freshest of any benchmark on this site. The market baskets underneath are much older: Thrifty rests on the 2021 re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, and Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal still rest on 2001-02 consumption data keyed to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines and MyPyramid. USDA has said the 2021 re-evaluation begins the process of addressing the other three; it has not finished.
The age bands do not match my household — what do I do?
Edit the per-person figures in Advanced options. Each one opens on a figure USDA actually publishes and its label names the alternatives: the 12-to-19 band opens on $260.50, the published cost for a girl aged 14 to 19, with $326.70 for a boy and $224.40 and $258.90 at 12 to 13 named beside it. Correcting one band is one edit, and it is far more honest than a blended average nobody published.
Does this cover eating out?
No, and that is deliberate. Every USDA plan prices a household that cooks everything at home, so a restaurant meal sits entirely outside all four. Enter it in its own field and the page reports total food separately. For scale, the average US household splits food roughly $519 at home against $329 away from home each month.
Are these prices the same everywhere in the country?
No. USDA publishes a US average, and food prices vary substantially by region and between rural and urban areas — Alaska and Hawaii run far higher and USDA publishes separate figures for them. Region is a categorical key this calculator cannot look up, so use the adjustment field to move every figure by a percentage that fits where you actually shop.