AU Grocery Prices — Coles, Woolworths, ALDI & IGA

Australian grocery prices from all four major chains in one run. Search a keyword, get back what Coles, Woolworths, ALDI and IGA each sell, in the same columns — price, was-price, specials, unit price, availability and a link.

Ask for milk and you get every chain's answer side by side. Switch to comparison mode and the same product from different chains lands on one row with the cheapest chain named.

Why this Actor

Every other Australian grocery scraper covers one chain. Comparing prices meant running three or four different Actors, each with different field names, and matching the products yourself.

This one does all four, normalises them into one shape, and can do the matching for you.

Measured reliability: 5 out of 5 consecutive test runs returned all four chains. For context, the two most-used competing Actors currently sit at 40% and 57% successful runs over the last 30 days.

What you get

Field	Example
chain, chainName	coles · Coles
name, brand, size	Arnott's Tim Tam Original Chocolate Biscuits · Arnott's · 200g
sizeNormalised	200g — same size written the same way for every chain
price, wasPrice	4.49 · 6.00
isOnSpecial, specialType	true · half_price / multi_buy / 25% off / special
saveAmount, savePercent	1.51 · 25
multiBuy	{"quantity": 2, "totalPrice": 8, "unitPriceText": "$2.00/100G"}
specialEndsAt	2026-09-29T00:00:00Z (IGA only — the other chains don't publish it)
unitPrice, unitPriceText	2.25 · $2.25 per 100 g
available, category	true · Biscuits
barcode	9310199012717 (Woolworths only)
url, imageUrl	link to the product page and its photo

Input

{
  "keywords": ["full cream milk 2l", "weet-bix", "tim tam"],
  "chains": ["coles", "woolworths", "aldi", "iga"],
  "maxResultsPerKeyword": 25,
  "output": "comparison",
  "onSpecialOnly": false
}

Option	Meaning
keywords	Products to search in every selected chain. Required.
chains	Any of coles, woolworths, aldi, iga. Defaults to all four.
maxResultsPerKeyword	Cap per keyword per chain. Default 25, max 500.
output	products (one product per row) or comparison (one matched product per row).
onSpecialOnly	Only return products currently on special.
igaStoreId	IGA prices vary by store. Defaults to store 32600 (Erskine Park, NSW).

Output — comparison mode

Real output from a test run:

{
  "type": "comparison",
  "name": "Arnott's Tim Tam Original Chocolate Biscuits",
  "sizeNormalised": "200g",
  "chains": ["aldi", "coles", "iga", "woolworths"],
  "cheapestChain": "aldi",
  "cheapestPrice": 4.49,
  "priceSpread": 1.51,
  "products": {
    "coles":      { "price": 6.0,  "name": "Arnott's Tim Tam Chocolate Biscuits Original", "...": "..." },
    "woolworths": { "price": 6.0,  "name": "Arnott's Tim Tam Original Chocolate Biscuits 200g", "...": "..." },
    "aldi":       { "price": 4.49, "name": "ARNOTT'S Tim Tam Original Chocolate Biscuits 200g", "...": "..." },
    "iga":        { "price": 4.5,  "name": "Arnott's Tim Tam Chocolate Original", "...": "..." }
  }
}

Food recall alerts (FSANZ)

Set output to recalls to get official Australian food recalls from Food Standards Australia New Zealand, parsed into clean fields — and, if you want, checked against what the four supermarkets are selling right now.

{
  "output": "recalls",
  "recallDays": 90,
  "keywords": ["ham", "peanut butter"],
  "recallStates": ["NSW"],
  "recallAllergens": ["peanut"],
  "findAlternatives": true
}

Option	Meaning
keywords	Optional watch list. Only recalls whose product or company contains every word of a keyword. Leave empty for all recalls.
recallDays	How far back to look. Default 90. FSANZ history starts late 2023.
recallStates	Only recalls affecting these states. Nationwide recalls always match.
recallHazards	allergen, listeria, salmonella, e-coli, microbial, foreign-matter, chemical, other.
recallAllergens	Only allergen recalls involving e.g. peanut, milk, sesame.
meatOnly	Only meat, poultry and smallgoods.
findAlternatives	Search the selected chains for the same kind of product from other brands, cheapest unit price first.
organicOnly	Only suggest alternatives with "organic" in the name.

Each row:

{
  "type": "recall",
  "product": "JC Seafood Sweet Chilli & Lime Salmon Portions",
  "size": "275g",
  "company": "KB Seafood Company Pty Ltd",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-10",
  "states": ["WA"],
  "retailers": ["woolworths"],
  "dateMarking": "Best Before 18.09.26",
  "hazardType": "allergen",
  "allergens": ["soy"],
  "problem": "The presence of an undeclared allergen (soy).",
  "whatToDo": "Consumers who have a soy allergy or intolerance should not consume this product...",
  "noticePdfUrls": ["https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/..."],
  "url": "https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/food-recalls/recall-alert/jc-seafood-sweet-chilli-lime-salmon-portions-275g",
  "alternativesQuery": "salmon portions",
  "possibleShelfListings": [ { "chain": "woolworths", "name": "...", "url": "..." } ],
  "alternatives": [ { "chain": "coles", "name": "...", "price": 9.0, "unitPriceText": "...", "url": "..." } ],
  "source": "Food Standards Australia New Zealand",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

How to read the shelf check

• possibleShelfListings are products from the recalled brand that look like the recalled item. A recall normally covers specific batches or dates only — check dateMarking against the pack before acting. Being listed online does not mean the listing is affected.
• alternatives are products of the same kind from other brands. They are not under this recall; that is all it means. They are not certified safe, and "organic" is a preference filter, not a safety claim — organic products are recalled too.
• alternativesQuery shows the search phrase used, so you can see why an alternative was suggested.

Recalls are fetched fresh and cached between runs, so repeat runs only read new notices.

Always follow the official notice. This Actor restates FSANZ information for convenience; the linked FSANZ page and the company's recall notice are authoritative. If you are unwell, seek medical advice.

How product matching works

Two products are only treated as the same item when all of these agree:

1. Normalised size — 2L and 2000ml are the same; 175g and 200g are not.
2. Brand — with one deliberate exception: house brands are comparable to each other, so Coles Full Cream Milk, Woolworths Full Cream Milk and ALDI's Farmdale line up on one row. Community Co, Black & Gold, Essentials and Macro are treated the same way.
3. Product variant — flavour, dietary and physical variants must match exactly. Tim Tam Original never matches Tim Tam Chewy Caramel. Lactose-free never matches regular. 3-ply never matches 4-ply. Free-range eggs never match cage eggs.

The matcher is deliberately conservative. It would rather miss a match than invent a wrong one, so a price comparison it gives you is one you can trust.

Example uses

• Weekly shop — price your regular list at all four chains and see which is cheapest this week.
• Specials watch — run with onSpecialOnly on a schedule to catch half-price items as they land.
• Track a price over time — run daily and keep the dataset; wasPrice and specialEndsAt tell you when a discount started and when it ends.
• Feed an AI assistant — one call returns the whole Australian grocery market for a keyword, already normalised.

Notes and limits

• Prices are the online prices published by each chain, which can differ from the shelf price in a particular store.
• IGA is a group of independently-owned stores, so its prices are per-store. Change igaStoreId to price a different one.
• ALDI's online catalogue is smaller than its in-store range.
• Only Woolworths publishes barcodes, so matching uses brand, size and product name rather than barcodes.
• Only IGA publishes an end date for its specials.
• No account or login is needed for any chain. This Actor only reads prices that are already public on each chain's website.

Data sources and attribution

• Prices and products are read from the public websites of Coles, Woolworths, ALDI and IGA. Product images are linked, never copied or re-hosted. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by any retailer; brand names are used only to identify products.
• Food recall information is sourced from Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). FSANZ does not endorse this Actor or its use of the information. Company recall notices (PDFs) are third-party documents and are linked, not reproduced.
• Information is provided as-is for convenience and may be incomplete or out of date. Always check the official source before relying on it for health or safety decisions.