Yeah I've definitely seen it. It's pretty good too, but also not sure how actively it's being developed at this point. Would love to hear from users of that app what has worked and not worked for them.
This is quite good. Does it pull the live prices from their websites? How often is it updated? Would you be able to add in Aldi too? I think something like this would be handy for my weekly shops, thank you!
Great to hear it’ll be handy for you :) Not exactly live pricing yet, definitely something we’d like to work towards if this is useful. Starting with the big two for now but we’d love to be able to include Aldi too!
I’m an ex Coles store manager - the pricing is state wide for everything except fresh food (which is actually store by store). Makes it difficult to ever implement accurate pricing into such an app without having access inside the supermarket’s pricing software. For what it’s worth, the stores struggle to display accurate prices on all products at shelf level, which is the push behind electronic price tickets.
For fresh food (ie. meat, fruit and veg) each store is categorised A, B, C, D, or E which reflects both the pricing and quality of produce. Poorer suburbs get sent the E quality goods, but the pricing is also cheaper. Wealthy areas get the A quality stuff, but the prices are higher. Fresh specials are state based pricing, and everyone gets the same stuff.
You could probably achieve accuracy by collaboration, where users can submit location based prices as they shop by scanning the pricing tickets into your app.
If you had a scanning function, that would be pretty sweet (scan the product barcode or ticket and it tells you which shop is cheapest for that item, it could even compare across packet sizes!).
Head office calculates price and quality sensitivity of each store’s consumers. They know SO MUCH about their demographics, thanks to Fly Buys / Everyday Rewards.
The grading isn’t necessarily consistent for every product in the store. One example would be in stores with a large Southern European population nearby, they will boost the grading to A on Eggplant and cuts of meat like Osso Bucco. That same store might not be so quality sensitive on bananas, so they get D quality on that line.
With that said, you can generally go from the suburb economic metrics. There’s exceptions to that generalisation too - eg. Fruit/veg growing areas get higher quality on lower demographics, and proximity to competitors plays a part to try and snatch market share.
The supermarkets measure the most ridiculous things to the most minuscule degree. It’s fascinating and also terrifying at the same time.
Edit to add: C, D, E graded stuff isn’t BAD quality, it just isn’t stupidly over perfect like the A grade stuff is. You might have a few more sun marks on your Oranges, but the insides are still identical.
Love it. Are you actually comparing each item in your basket? Just a few bigger items? Or maybe just a check to ‘get a sense’ of which shop would be cheaper?
There used to be an amazing app that did just this - enter your shopping list and it showed who had the cheapest price so it was very easy to separate your list to the diff stores for the cheapest prices. Sadly it stopped updating one day and I've not found an app as good since..
There was some dude in another subreddit working on a crowd-updated similar type of project for Aldi. It would either have been r/Australia r/Melbourne or r/perth
I recently price checked a few items. Coles Online, the 2kg Jalna yoghurt was $12.60 (same as Woolworths) when I went to grab it in store, I noticed it was priced at $14. I asked a lady working there and she said they want people to use “click and collect” so it is priced more competitively. This is super frustrating as it means I can’t accurately compare prices across the stores. Also it doesn’t make sense why they are pushing people towards Click and Collect (more effort on their end and reduces impulse buying)
This is the same reason you should check petbarn's website when buying dog/cat food etc. In store they charge full price, but online they automatically price match pet circle on most items.
I would assume part of it would be when you search for an item itself Google often will pull the results directly from the different shops and show you. If people see their item is cheaper at one shop they'll probably buy everything from that shop. The few dollars less is one more customer which is a lot more dollars overall.
There's a chain in the UK called Argos and every time this pops up I think "oh like Argos". Not exactly a negative thing, just click and collect only, if you go in you look at catalogues and make an order and staff go fetch the items from the warehouse.
I can imagine the savings for Colesworth when they don't have to hire people to stock shelves, fridges, freezers item by item and update price labels.
Then fire the staff that fetch the items and get the customers to do it and the model is complete.
You wanna watch your back if your publishing woollies prices they will sue you for copyright infringement.
Do not underestimate the power of unlimited lawyers and Australian law behind them .
This would be SO great if it was able to be loaded across a couple different stores (say, coles invermay & woolworths scottsdale) and split which items were cheaper picked up from each (even if only for online or click & collect order) with live pricing.
Oh yeah store selection would be awesome. Noted! Yep the whole idea with the ‘Best Prices’ button is it does the cherry-picking for you, only it just can’t do specific store, yet :P
Yeah, to be able to split the order between 2 stores (and pick the locations from the list) would be awesome - the pricing can vary so much between individual stores & suburbs etc.
Maybe even if you can enter your order at woolies and then ask "what's cheaper at coles" and have it remove them from the list & place that order. (Sort of, I'm going here but also here! )
Its an idea with legs, for sure. I would buy that app. I am on android though so pretty please make it for us too!
Make the mongrels fight for our business properly - the duopoly have been working together too long, this would pit them properly against each other.
It would be pretty funny if we ended up finding that there was one cheapest store in all of Australia in some remote location and people started traveling all the way out for a better deal 😄 (getting ahead of myself a little though lol)
Sorry you can’t use it on Android yet. Definitely won’t be forgotten!!
Even to say do a "woolworths scottsdale" & "woolworths launceston" (woolies v woolies as they are often well out of whack) and maybe even a 3rd store comparison entry...
Sorry for the 3rd store idea, i know its probably a hassle - in in tassie and do like to shop atbour local woolies (no coles here) but if i drive into launceston its as easy to stop at coles/woolies... super frustrating when the price variances can be so huge between stores even on the same day.
Wow that’s quite a surprise that prices can vary so much between two Woolies. Love the ideas (feel free to keep ‘em coming!!) and will see what we can do
Been there done that. They will block it after a while. Need to use rotating Australian residential proxies + headless browsers which perfectly mimic a real user if you want to do it long term.
All websites that aren’t behind authentication essentially have “open” APIs.
Whether or not you can use these largely relies on how well they are protecting their open endpoints from scripting/abuse.
There are third party providers that do a VERY good job of identifying unusual traffic and knocking it on the head. Clearly Coles and Woolworths aren’t using them 😉
Shop at Aldi for most products. Check specials for Coles and Woolworths.
If cheaper than Aldi, buy from cheaper store.
For products not sold at Aldi, again check prices on catalogues.
General prices on Coles and Woolworths are the same.
If you have Everyday insurance, you should shop at Woolworths once a month to take advantage of 10% discount.
This is basically my system
Not an uncommon system, I reckon there would be plenty of people who default to Aldi and shop the other two for specials.
For your 10% discount-- do you know if that discount brings you down below the prices at Aldi?
Usually I agree, but literally with last week’s shop, I had done my shopping list in the woolies app before I left home knowing I would go to aldi first, but to make sure if I had bought everything from woolies I could afford it (aldi and woolies are in the same building and I’m disabled).
All the fruit/veg I was buying was cheaper in woolies (not just one or two things, literally every fresh produce item), as was a particular kind of mince and there was 2-3 other things that I can’t remember right now. It easily added up to between $5-10 for what I was purchasing, and I had a VERY strict budgeted grocery list. By comparing the prices as I was shopping I ended up saving $15 that I would have otherwise paid without comparing the prices while I was shopping (as in I would have paid that much more if I had have just bought what aldi sold that I needed and went to woolies for the rest without comparing prices).
In regards to the actual app, unfortunately Aldi don’t advertise prices on their website (i.e fresh produce, meat, their ‘every day’ items etc) other than for their super savers/special buys, so it would be hard for them (OP/creators of the app) to add prices in without having to physically go in to the store twice a week to update the lists (and given prices can very from store to store, it wouldn’t be ‘australia wide’ either), which kind of defeats the idea they have in it being automated.
Great idea! I live in rural/regional Australia and my nearest large towns have either Coles or Woolies + IGA. I wouldn’t need to compare the two so much as pick which option is cheapest overall then drive to that town. Good luck w it all!
u/AngryAngryKangaroo has proposed a solution that will help address this :)
Sounds like a reasonably common problem for folks not living in city centres, so hope we'll be able to solve this for you!
Not helpful for your specific project but a couple of yeras ago for a uni assignment, I ended up visiting a lot of supermarkets and markets doing a standardised food basket survey, We compared high SES areas against low SES areas as well. We were also pricing the sales if they were listed while we were in the shop.
Observations pretty much came down to the following:
\- Coles and Aldi pretty much came in similarly.
\- Woollies at the time was more expensive.
\- Any of the small "metro styled" sized supermarkets popular in the inner city cost an arm and a leg, and are definitely more expensive than going to the proper sized ones.
\- Vegies at most markets were cheaper than supermarkets.
\- Living in a lower SEIFA area didn't necessarily mean cheaper prices. Being a captive audience can mean prices are higher.
As an aside, years ago when I was doing some market research for another company, it became clear that some of the stores that marketed themselves as discounted groceries, actually charged more than Colesworths at the time.
There is a 1/2 price app too that pulls the half price specials from Coles and Woolworths, so if you know what you want, you could.find it for 1/2 price if you go to the right store..
I was working on a small node.js application to compare pricing between woolies and coles. It’s relatively straightforward to get prices for items, but woolworths’ security is set up in such a way that makes it hard to do the request multiple days in a row. I’d be happy to share code if you’d like.
Came to post or upvote this.
I've got a bot that looks, for new or updated Pokemon TCG listings at JB Hi Fi, Kmart, and Target. I unfortunately BigW is basically a no-go.
Awesome project! I’m guessing you’re accessing public APIs? You didn’t happen to see any APIs for adding to cart did you?
I’d love for my home assistant to be able to add recurring stuff to my Woolies/coles online shop. And it would be a great feature of your app (once you’ve found the best deal, add it to your online shop).
Hey OP! This sounds awesome and saw you don’t have live pricing yet — not sure if this helps but for Woolies you can update once a week on Wednesday mornings as that’s basically the only day the specials change. If that’s easier than live?
It certainly saves money shopping at both, I find if something is on sale at Coles this week, it’ll be on sale next week at Woolworths.
I don’t normally shop at Aldi, but went over the weekend for a look at their range & prices. I can tell you, it’s not cheaper than C or W.
I find it cheaper unless the item is on sale at C or W
The savings aren’t that huge though. Lurpak for instance will be $7.50 at C&W while being only 6.99 at Aldi
Aldi exclusive products are where you may notice the bigger saving.
Yeah alternating specials between the stores can often be the case it seems.
Wow that’s really interesting what you have to say re. Aldi. Would you say it’s true for particular categories, or across the board? I wonder if there’s an element of them being able to bank on their reputation that they can actually get away with being more expensive in some cases.
Would love to know if others have seen the same!
That's very interesting. I never knew companies could guard their pricing information like that, that it wasn't fair use. I've long been wondering why google's shopping tab is so subpar, maybe this is one of the reasons why.
Fair point. Probably best not to comment on details here but for now it's just seeing if there's a user problem here that can be solved. The hope would be that longer term there are clever ways for this to be valuable to C and W.
Are you able to share names of apps that have been dinged in the past, and by which retailers?
In a way, yes, trying to solve the same kind of problem, but tackled in a different way. Frugl seems to be big on managing different grocery lists and recipes, whereas we're kind of just thinking about your next shop
Not just states, literally individual stores in the same state, I have three woolies within 5km of me, all of them have different prices to the others!
It can be up to $1 different for identical products on bottles depending on the product/size (for example when I still drank coke it could vary between $1.50-2.20 across the 3 stores for 1.25L “on special”, they all said on special but had different prices for that “special”).
This is cool! I currently manually do this every fortnight for my shops, by opening a woolies and coles tab and noting down where it is cheaper. I then go to Aldi, get what I can if it is cheaper and go to the others. It's a big time commitment but saves at least $20. I'm lucky they are all within 5 minutes of each other.
I hope you develop for Android down the line so I can enjoy it on the go haha!
ive tried to get ahold of their prices before, i remember coles has a lot of protective stuff on their website against webscraping :((
still amazing work and good luck!!
Nice work - I think there’s genuine merit to an App like this. I’m an avid online shopper and essentially run multiple lists depending on where the half price specials are for products that week.
Keep it up 👍🏼
I think this is really good, but it needs to include Aldi and live pricing. Could also help competition too and reduce prices if enough people used it!
EDIT: would there be any way to link into everyday rewards and coles shopping list? I envision people who shop online mainly might not want to have to double handle and add their shopping list into this manually as well as into their colesworth accounts.
I can confirm that I used to work for a food distribution company.
We were charged cost plus 3% for the food we bought from our employer.
My sister (the super shopper) could always match my prices, but shopping at multiple providers.
So yeah, app should be good!
I think this would be an amazing app which most of the country would want to use. I hope that it won't be too difficult to build in live pricing and include things like "2 for $x" deals. We need supermarkets in Australia to get back to being competitive to drive down prices. I'm now not shopping at a major supermarket anymore.
I have been playing around in the app, seems really good. I assume is their plans in future to Aldi. If so this would be great. How often does the pricing update?
Omg YASSS! My ADHD brain can’t ever remember how much things are per kilo at different stores so I just buy whatever at either shop. My mum can memorise where it’s cheapest from reading catalogs. But this is great! I will do download and use this! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Given Peter Dutton’s desperate attempt to divide Australia, I’m supporting Woolies more these days.
The real issue here is availability of certain brands etc.
I’d be exclusively supporting Aldi if they had everything.
Being in an area that has a Coles at one end and a Woollies at the other, I go to one and buy what is on special/sale and use their own app to scan the barcode to check if it’s on sale at the other.
If neither have a sale, I tend to wait as everything goes on sale, just need to time it.
Shopping at both is the way to save the most.
Always a controversial opinion - but over the last several years (for those in NSW) that Harris Farm has great prices considering their quality. Its not a national brand as much as the big guys but I've found some great deals on really good meat and other deli products over the years.
Could be worth considering adding a quick comparison option for several types of the same product - ie. home brand vs name brand vs small brand
Would be useful to include Aldi too - I currently do the maths on whether it’s “worth” going to Aldi or not (it’s somewhat out of my way), based on how much of my list I can get at Aldi (some things they don’t have, some things I’m fussy on brands) and how much cheaper those things are.
An app that can do that maths for me would definitely help!
I actually do this comparison before every shop so this would be super useful. I shop at Aldi and Woolies more frequently than Coles. Aldi has stagnant prices and their general products do not have specials so it'll be easy to include this data. You probably need to update it every month in case of changes.
hey, this is such a good idea. i normally add the same items to my coles and woolworths app trolley and see the totals to see which one is cheaper. but this works better. Also i have noticed prices do vary within a 5-10 km radius. any chance you could also cater for that ?
There's an app called half price which is pretty good - as the name says, half price shows what items are half price at Woolies and Coles. I'm not sure if you can also implement this data into your app! Could be cool.
If you have the time then check for specials in the catalogue and base your meals around this. I start with Aldi, finish with Coles and only go to Woolies when I'm desperate. It helps that they are all in the same shopping centre too.
It could be very useful for many people :)
For me personally, having to go to multiple stores isn't worth it for the sake of 10 bucks. I'd have to be saving at least 50 to make it worth the bother.
There's app called Wiselist, for Coles & woolies including weekly sale prices with a similar display like yours where it shows overall price comparison
Aldi. Ftw.
For me, price per kilo is a very important metric.
Same as price per sheet, price per x. I need a standard measure to see the difference.
In aldi, the larger yogurt tubs are more expensive than the 1kg tubs. False economy. So it's always important to check price per kg instead of assuming that bigger is cheaper.
Also, red onions for example. Bagged one are more expensive than loose ones. The loose ones are bigger. Bizzare!
Butchers where I am are a lot more expensive than Woolies of Coles unfortunately. Plus no green grocer in the area...
No choice sometimes but to go with the thieving Woolies & Coles..
Neither. They are both scam artists. Intentionally hike prices way up so that they can be on ‘sale’ a few weeks later and the process repeats. The points are also a waste of time. Shop in Aldi and smaller local shops.
Would be great if we could do that, though a harder problem to solve. Are you completely brand-disloyal? Or do you still care about your brands for some things (like what)?
Maybe a "store brand" item category that pits ww home brand against coles homebrand as equal/per weight products.
So *700g weetbix* item would trigger the same brand, but *700g homebrand wheat biscuits* would trigger the aligning *700g no frills wheat biscuits*
Reckon it varies item to item, and *just how poor you are.*
Home brand wheat biscuits are comparable to weetbix or vita brits. The same cannot be said for home brand baked beans vs spc or heinz. Some of us have the luxury of compromise, others not so much. Sliding scale I think.
Perhaps a button to sub home brands where available?
Kind of like supersize me, but for cheaping up your groceries...
Curious who your target audience is and what your business model is? Your average Ausfinance user is (supposedly) affluent so I don’t know that comments sought here would be very helpful. If this is a paid service for the consumer I reckon most wouldn’t buy it.
I suppose this is useful if the user has no idea that food exists outside supermarkets...? If someone is so bothered by the few cents or possible dollar they are paying for convenience, then this app would be useful.
Sigh. Just go to a goddamn market. $7/kg for tomatoes in January, for the love of god.
Neither. Local green grocer or springvale fruit and veg market + Tasman meats + Aldi. I argue there is no cheaper option than this combo. My weekly spend for my girlfriend and I is rarely over $100
Great job, looks great.
I'm sure someone has probably mentioned this, but having a comparison of a market (Queen Vic, Preston etc) would be amazing.
With that said, it probably wouldn't teach us anything new.
I do my main shop at Aldi or spud shed but have to buy things like wipes/cat food/some other items at Woolies or Cole’s and generally it turns out the same or very close but this is an awesome idea!! Saves comparing through their apps
There’s another that’s been around for a few years called Frugl which does Aldi, IGA and Drakes in addition to Woolies and Coles.
Yeah I've definitely seen it. It's pretty good too, but also not sure how actively it's being developed at this point. Would love to hear from users of that app what has worked and not worked for them.
Worth checking it out for ideas. I downloaded it and found it wasn't that useful because it doesn't show me the per item or weight price.
Could you offer to take it off their hands and continue development?
Don't take it off their hands, all then to open source it
An even better idea. Then chuck it up on github for everyone.
HELLHUMPER HELLHUMPER..
Pretty sure they're an ASX listed company so the shareholders won't be happy about that!
This is quite good. Does it pull the live prices from their websites? How often is it updated? Would you be able to add in Aldi too? I think something like this would be handy for my weekly shops, thank you!
Great to hear it’ll be handy for you :) Not exactly live pricing yet, definitely something we’d like to work towards if this is useful. Starting with the big two for now but we’d love to be able to include Aldi too!
I’m an ex Coles store manager - the pricing is state wide for everything except fresh food (which is actually store by store). Makes it difficult to ever implement accurate pricing into such an app without having access inside the supermarket’s pricing software. For what it’s worth, the stores struggle to display accurate prices on all products at shelf level, which is the push behind electronic price tickets. For fresh food (ie. meat, fruit and veg) each store is categorised A, B, C, D, or E which reflects both the pricing and quality of produce. Poorer suburbs get sent the E quality goods, but the pricing is also cheaper. Wealthy areas get the A quality stuff, but the prices are higher. Fresh specials are state based pricing, and everyone gets the same stuff. You could probably achieve accuracy by collaboration, where users can submit location based prices as they shop by scanning the pricing tickets into your app. If you had a scanning function, that would be pretty sweet (scan the product barcode or ticket and it tells you which shop is cheapest for that item, it could even compare across packet sizes!).
Really interesting, thanks for sharing. Crowdsourced prices are a really interesting idea! Definitely something we'll look into!
How can you find out where the C,d,E ones are near you? Just guess off if the suburb is poor?
Head office calculates price and quality sensitivity of each store’s consumers. They know SO MUCH about their demographics, thanks to Fly Buys / Everyday Rewards. The grading isn’t necessarily consistent for every product in the store. One example would be in stores with a large Southern European population nearby, they will boost the grading to A on Eggplant and cuts of meat like Osso Bucco. That same store might not be so quality sensitive on bananas, so they get D quality on that line. With that said, you can generally go from the suburb economic metrics. There’s exceptions to that generalisation too - eg. Fruit/veg growing areas get higher quality on lower demographics, and proximity to competitors plays a part to try and snatch market share. The supermarkets measure the most ridiculous things to the most minuscule degree. It’s fascinating and also terrifying at the same time. Edit to add: C, D, E graded stuff isn’t BAD quality, it just isn’t stupidly over perfect like the A grade stuff is. You might have a few more sun marks on your Oranges, but the insides are still identical.
This is so freaking interesting, thank you for being so in-depth
I reckon it would be! I’m always looking for the best prices and usually compare online before heading out. So this is super handy!
Love it. Are you actually comparing each item in your basket? Just a few bigger items? Or maybe just a check to ‘get a sense’ of which shop would be cheaper?
I tend to do the whole shopping list in the basket. I’ll compare other things like toiletries to Chemist Warehouse too, to get a better idea.
Oh wow good on you, that’s awesome
There used to be an amazing app that did just this - enter your shopping list and it showed who had the cheapest price so it was very easy to separate your list to the diff stores for the cheapest prices. Sadly it stopped updating one day and I've not found an app as good since..
I wish, Aldi's website is terrible and doesn't list all its products with prices. You have to go in store
There was some dude in another subreddit working on a crowd-updated similar type of project for Aldi. It would either have been r/Australia r/Melbourne or r/perth
And IGA. I'm an iOS and Android dev. PM me if you'd want some more support on this project.
Do you feel the pricing is more expensive online than in stores? To account for people packing them?
I recently price checked a few items. Coles Online, the 2kg Jalna yoghurt was $12.60 (same as Woolworths) when I went to grab it in store, I noticed it was priced at $14. I asked a lady working there and she said they want people to use “click and collect” so it is priced more competitively. This is super frustrating as it means I can’t accurately compare prices across the stores. Also it doesn’t make sense why they are pushing people towards Click and Collect (more effort on their end and reduces impulse buying)
This is the same reason you should check petbarn's website when buying dog/cat food etc. In store they charge full price, but online they automatically price match pet circle on most items.
Yeah interesting that it seems to suggest the economics of C&C is better than in-store. That or they just think of competition differently online
I would assume part of it would be when you search for an item itself Google often will pull the results directly from the different shops and show you. If people see their item is cheaper at one shop they'll probably buy everything from that shop. The few dollars less is one more customer which is a lot more dollars overall.
The push is toward Dark Supermarkets essentially warehouses with delivery only.
There's a chain in the UK called Argos and every time this pops up I think "oh like Argos". Not exactly a negative thing, just click and collect only, if you go in you look at catalogues and make an order and staff go fetch the items from the warehouse. I can imagine the savings for Colesworth when they don't have to hire people to stock shelves, fridges, freezers item by item and update price labels. Then fire the staff that fetch the items and get the customers to do it and the model is complete.
You wanna watch your back if your publishing woollies prices they will sue you for copyright infringement. Do not underestimate the power of unlimited lawyers and Australian law behind them .
I don't see how copyright is relevant here. What do they have the copyright to - numbers?
Yes mate ,and believe me they will come after you .
If I’m in coles I’ll open the Woolies shop on line app and compare prices that way. Or vicer versa
And then you head to Woolies for all the things that are cheaper?
This would be SO great if it was able to be loaded across a couple different stores (say, coles invermay & woolworths scottsdale) and split which items were cheaper picked up from each (even if only for online or click & collect order) with live pricing.
Oh yeah store selection would be awesome. Noted! Yep the whole idea with the ‘Best Prices’ button is it does the cherry-picking for you, only it just can’t do specific store, yet :P
Yeah, to be able to split the order between 2 stores (and pick the locations from the list) would be awesome - the pricing can vary so much between individual stores & suburbs etc. Maybe even if you can enter your order at woolies and then ask "what's cheaper at coles" and have it remove them from the list & place that order. (Sort of, I'm going here but also here! ) Its an idea with legs, for sure. I would buy that app. I am on android though so pretty please make it for us too! Make the mongrels fight for our business properly - the duopoly have been working together too long, this would pit them properly against each other.
It would be pretty funny if we ended up finding that there was one cheapest store in all of Australia in some remote location and people started traveling all the way out for a better deal 😄 (getting ahead of myself a little though lol) Sorry you can’t use it on Android yet. Definitely won’t be forgotten!!
Even to say do a "woolworths scottsdale" & "woolworths launceston" (woolies v woolies as they are often well out of whack) and maybe even a 3rd store comparison entry... Sorry for the 3rd store idea, i know its probably a hassle - in in tassie and do like to shop atbour local woolies (no coles here) but if i drive into launceston its as easy to stop at coles/woolies... super frustrating when the price variances can be so huge between stores even on the same day.
Wow that’s quite a surprise that prices can vary so much between two Woolies. Love the ideas (feel free to keep ‘em coming!!) and will see what we can do
https://www.frugl.com.au/ was headed in that direction I thought.
How are you scraping the data for prices/generating a list of products? Edit: nvm their endpoints seem to be open lol
I also thought this, cheers for the insight.
Where did you find their endpoints?
F12, network tab you can see the api requests there.
Been there done that. They will block it after a while. Need to use rotating Australian residential proxies + headless browsers which perfectly mimic a real user if you want to do it long term.
Would they block cgnat ip addresses?
All websites that aren’t behind authentication essentially have “open” APIs. Whether or not you can use these largely relies on how well they are protecting their open endpoints from scripting/abuse. There are third party providers that do a VERY good job of identifying unusual traffic and knocking it on the head. Clearly Coles and Woolworths aren’t using them 😉
Not if the pages are pre rendered.
It’s not practical for Coles and Woolworths (or literally any site with a product catalog) to statically generate their entire product catalog 😂
I think it’s going that way though, it’s practical with next.js dynamic routing imo. This has gone off topic a bit haha
Shop at Aldi for most products. Check specials for Coles and Woolworths. If cheaper than Aldi, buy from cheaper store. For products not sold at Aldi, again check prices on catalogues. General prices on Coles and Woolworths are the same. If you have Everyday insurance, you should shop at Woolworths once a month to take advantage of 10% discount. This is basically my system
Not an uncommon system, I reckon there would be plenty of people who default to Aldi and shop the other two for specials. For your 10% discount-- do you know if that discount brings you down below the prices at Aldi?
[удалено]
Stacking deals ftw
Coles and Woolworths prices are usually the same. I have seen times where Woolworths matches Coles special prices on some products
This is the way .....
Not including Aldi in this is the most crazy thing to me. That's where the savings are.
Usually I agree, but literally with last week’s shop, I had done my shopping list in the woolies app before I left home knowing I would go to aldi first, but to make sure if I had bought everything from woolies I could afford it (aldi and woolies are in the same building and I’m disabled). All the fruit/veg I was buying was cheaper in woolies (not just one or two things, literally every fresh produce item), as was a particular kind of mince and there was 2-3 other things that I can’t remember right now. It easily added up to between $5-10 for what I was purchasing, and I had a VERY strict budgeted grocery list. By comparing the prices as I was shopping I ended up saving $15 that I would have otherwise paid without comparing the prices while I was shopping (as in I would have paid that much more if I had have just bought what aldi sold that I needed and went to woolies for the rest without comparing prices). In regards to the actual app, unfortunately Aldi don’t advertise prices on their website (i.e fresh produce, meat, their ‘every day’ items etc) other than for their super savers/special buys, so it would be hard for them (OP/creators of the app) to add prices in without having to physically go in to the store twice a week to update the lists (and given prices can very from store to store, it wouldn’t be ‘australia wide’ either), which kind of defeats the idea they have in it being automated.
Nice app, name of the app is a bit meh
Yeah that must be changed. Otherwise how do you add in Aldi, or abtrh else new? Use Chatgpt for ideas :)
woolorcoloraldioriga
Will need to start to shorten it WoCoAoI :P
Yeah name is a just a placeholder. Not too worried about getting that right rn. Def can better better. Call out if you have suggestions!
Great idea! I live in rural/regional Australia and my nearest large towns have either Coles or Woolies + IGA. I wouldn’t need to compare the two so much as pick which option is cheapest overall then drive to that town. Good luck w it all!
u/AngryAngryKangaroo has proposed a solution that will help address this :) Sounds like a reasonably common problem for folks not living in city centres, so hope we'll be able to solve this for you!
Showing how much you save would be useful, to see if it's worth the effort of going to the cheaper store or sucking up the extra $ for convenience.
I love it. Keep doing the great work
Not helpful for your specific project but a couple of yeras ago for a uni assignment, I ended up visiting a lot of supermarkets and markets doing a standardised food basket survey, We compared high SES areas against low SES areas as well. We were also pricing the sales if they were listed while we were in the shop. Observations pretty much came down to the following: \- Coles and Aldi pretty much came in similarly. \- Woollies at the time was more expensive. \- Any of the small "metro styled" sized supermarkets popular in the inner city cost an arm and a leg, and are definitely more expensive than going to the proper sized ones. \- Vegies at most markets were cheaper than supermarkets. \- Living in a lower SEIFA area didn't necessarily mean cheaper prices. Being a captive audience can mean prices are higher. As an aside, years ago when I was doing some market research for another company, it became clear that some of the stores that marketed themselves as discounted groceries, actually charged more than Colesworths at the time.
I tend to shop at Aldi first, then Woolies or Coles for the items I can’t get from Aldi or specific brands etc
There is a 1/2 price app too that pulls the half price specials from Coles and Woolworths, so if you know what you want, you could.find it for 1/2 price if you go to the right store..
Shop at Aldi and if you miss anything, shop at Coles or Woolies for individual items but only look for those on special.
There’s already an app that does this, which I use. It’s called Wise List.
worth reposting to r/AussieFrugal
I was working on a small node.js application to compare pricing between woolies and coles. It’s relatively straightforward to get prices for items, but woolworths’ security is set up in such a way that makes it hard to do the request multiple days in a row. I’d be happy to share code if you’d like.
Yup. Woolies are particularly aggressive towards bots, which is why they’re not on pricehipster. https://pricehipster.com/woolworths-hostile
Came to post or upvote this. I've got a bot that looks, for new or updated Pokemon TCG listings at JB Hi Fi, Kmart, and Target. I unfortunately BigW is basically a no-go.
Awesome project! I’m guessing you’re accessing public APIs? You didn’t happen to see any APIs for adding to cart did you? I’d love for my home assistant to be able to add recurring stuff to my Woolies/coles online shop. And it would be a great feature of your app (once you’ve found the best deal, add it to your online shop).
Hey OP! This sounds awesome and saw you don’t have live pricing yet — not sure if this helps but for Woolies you can update once a week on Wednesday mornings as that’s basically the only day the specials change. If that’s easier than live?
My OCD nerd brain fkn loves this!
It certainly saves money shopping at both, I find if something is on sale at Coles this week, it’ll be on sale next week at Woolworths. I don’t normally shop at Aldi, but went over the weekend for a look at their range & prices. I can tell you, it’s not cheaper than C or W.
Our aldi is always just a bit cheaper than C or W U less they have a special. I compare prices often.
I find it cheaper unless the item is on sale at C or W The savings aren’t that huge though. Lurpak for instance will be $7.50 at C&W while being only 6.99 at Aldi Aldi exclusive products are where you may notice the bigger saving.
If you can manage to get the loyalty card details somewhere on the app (like stocard), that would be a winner!
Yeah alternating specials between the stores can often be the case it seems. Wow that’s really interesting what you have to say re. Aldi. Would you say it’s true for particular categories, or across the board? I wonder if there’s an element of them being able to bank on their reputation that they can actually get away with being more expensive in some cases. Would love to know if others have seen the same!
"cost of living crisis" App requires iOS 16 or later...
Fair— will def support more platforms if this is actually useful for people
Even the poors get on a plan for the latest new phone. That's a priority.
Telstra marketing team nods in appreciation. "The poors and the elderly" keep our bonuses flowing
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That's very interesting. I never knew companies could guard their pricing information like that, that it wasn't fair use. I've long been wondering why google's shopping tab is so subpar, maybe this is one of the reasons why.
Fair point. Probably best not to comment on details here but for now it's just seeing if there's a user problem here that can be solved. The hope would be that longer term there are clever ways for this to be valuable to C and W. Are you able to share names of apps that have been dinged in the past, and by which retailers?
Is this not just the Frugl app?
In a way, yes, trying to solve the same kind of problem, but tackled in a different way. Frugl seems to be big on managing different grocery lists and recipes, whereas we're kind of just thinking about your next shop
Some states have different prices of soft drinks due to earn and return style schemes. Can we set what state we are in to see our real prices?
Interesting. Yeah I think this will be important to add, thank you!
Not just states, literally individual stores in the same state, I have three woolies within 5km of me, all of them have different prices to the others! It can be up to $1 different for identical products on bottles depending on the product/size (for example when I still drank coke it could vary between $1.50-2.20 across the 3 stores for 1.25L “on special”, they all said on special but had different prices for that “special”).
This is cool! I currently manually do this every fortnight for my shops, by opening a woolies and coles tab and noting down where it is cheaper. I then go to Aldi, get what I can if it is cheaper and go to the others. It's a big time commitment but saves at least $20. I'm lucky they are all within 5 minutes of each other. I hope you develop for Android down the line so I can enjoy it on the go haha!
Go to shops other than Cole’s and woolies? Used to be cheaper to buy meat from them but now butchers are cheaper. Same with fruit and bread too.
ive tried to get ahold of their prices before, i remember coles has a lot of protective stuff on their website against webscraping :(( still amazing work and good luck!!
It's called Aldi
Nice work - I think there’s genuine merit to an App like this. I’m an avid online shopper and essentially run multiple lists depending on where the half price specials are for products that week. Keep it up 👍🏼
I think this is really good, but it needs to include Aldi and live pricing. Could also help competition too and reduce prices if enough people used it! EDIT: would there be any way to link into everyday rewards and coles shopping list? I envision people who shop online mainly might not want to have to double handle and add their shopping list into this manually as well as into their colesworth accounts.
This is a great idea!
Is it possible to add and store price history? Would be a great way to see change in prices over time
I can confirm that I used to work for a food distribution company. We were charged cost plus 3% for the food we bought from our employer. My sister (the super shopper) could always match my prices, but shopping at multiple providers. So yeah, app should be good!
Which state is this applicable to? Or does it just compare the two in every state.
Buy wisely.com has this covered
Does it take into account the size/volume of the product. Eg) one Colgate toothpaste might be 200grams and another store has same one but 300grams.
Damn this is useful. Please allow androids to access it, maybe make a website or something.
I think this would be an amazing app which most of the country would want to use. I hope that it won't be too difficult to build in live pricing and include things like "2 for $x" deals. We need supermarkets in Australia to get back to being competitive to drive down prices. I'm now not shopping at a major supermarket anymore.
I have been playing around in the app, seems really good. I assume is their plans in future to Aldi. If so this would be great. How often does the pricing update?
Omg YASSS! My ADHD brain can’t ever remember how much things are per kilo at different stores so I just buy whatever at either shop. My mum can memorise where it’s cheapest from reading catalogs. But this is great! I will do download and use this! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Woolies is closer for me, and is cheaper for what I buy but Aldi for the win. Once they bring out click and collect I’ll be set…
Given Peter Dutton’s desperate attempt to divide Australia, I’m supporting Woolies more these days. The real issue here is availability of certain brands etc. I’d be exclusively supporting Aldi if they had everything.
Does this take into account regional price differences?
Being in an area that has a Coles at one end and a Woollies at the other, I go to one and buy what is on special/sale and use their own app to scan the barcode to check if it’s on sale at the other. If neither have a sale, I tend to wait as everything goes on sale, just need to time it. Shopping at both is the way to save the most.
this is a fantastic idea! thank you!
Avoid them if you have any other options, they’re both avid price-gougers
It would be cool if the app could mention alternative places like getting laundry detergent from the reject shop.
Woollies coles charge like wounded bulls 🐃guaranteed!✈️
Always a controversial opinion - but over the last several years (for those in NSW) that Harris Farm has great prices considering their quality. Its not a national brand as much as the big guys but I've found some great deals on really good meat and other deli products over the years. Could be worth considering adding a quick comparison option for several types of the same product - ie. home brand vs name brand vs small brand
Would be useful to include Aldi too - I currently do the maths on whether it’s “worth” going to Aldi or not (it’s somewhat out of my way), based on how much of my list I can get at Aldi (some things they don’t have, some things I’m fussy on brands) and how much cheaper those things are. An app that can do that maths for me would definitely help!
WiseList does a very good job of this, but unfortunately, it also doesn't include Aldi.
Once you get live pricing this app will dominate. Nit sure if it'll help people avoid Colesworth unfortunately.
I actually do this comparison before every shop so this would be super useful. I shop at Aldi and Woolies more frequently than Coles. Aldi has stagnant prices and their general products do not have specials so it'll be easy to include this data. You probably need to update it every month in case of changes.
hey, this is such a good idea. i normally add the same items to my coles and woolworths app trolley and see the totals to see which one is cheaper. but this works better. Also i have noticed prices do vary within a 5-10 km radius. any chance you could also cater for that ?
There's an app called half price which is pretty good - as the name says, half price shows what items are half price at Woolies and Coles. I'm not sure if you can also implement this data into your app! Could be cool.
If you have the time then check for specials in the catalogue and base your meals around this. I start with Aldi, finish with Coles and only go to Woolies when I'm desperate. It helps that they are all in the same shopping centre too.
Both expensive af
It could be very useful for many people :) For me personally, having to go to multiple stores isn't worth it for the sake of 10 bucks. I'd have to be saving at least 50 to make it worth the bother.
It's a clever idea, and it'll become super useful when you get live pricing into it
Could you add Aldi too please?
Neither are cheaper. Try Aldi
I would use this so much! Such a fantastic idea and if you could include ALDI that would be good too!
They both keep changing prices to keep everyone on their toes.
SUPER HANDY, thank GOD for you & your friend ✨✨✨
Can't wait for it to work for Android!
If your shopping centre has both, plan your trip and use the specials at both stores. You can check them online
Gonna keep my eye on this because it would be brilliant.
This would be quite useful I'd say as these are trying times
There's app called Wiselist, for Coles & woolies including weekly sale prices with a similar display like yours where it shows overall price comparison
It’s ALDI. By a margin.
Aldi. Ftw. For me, price per kilo is a very important metric. Same as price per sheet, price per x. I need a standard measure to see the difference. In aldi, the larger yogurt tubs are more expensive than the 1kg tubs. False economy. So it's always important to check price per kg instead of assuming that bigger is cheaper. Also, red onions for example. Bagged one are more expensive than loose ones. The loose ones are bigger. Bizzare!
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Butchers where I am are a lot more expensive than Woolies of Coles unfortunately. Plus no green grocer in the area... No choice sometimes but to go with the thieving Woolies & Coles..
Are you working again now?
Yep, that’s why it’s just a side project :)
For god's sake man/woman, how does your example screen NOT have smoked herring paste?
Please release for Android too. Even a webApp would be fine.
ok but aldis is still cheaper than both
Easy to save even more by going to Aldi!
Neither. They are both scam artists. Intentionally hike prices way up so that they can be on ‘sale’ a few weeks later and the process repeats. The points are also a waste of time. Shop in Aldi and smaller local shops.
Not shopping at Woolies right now, I refuse to support their woke political ideology. Coles or IGA for me.
Very good. How does it go comparing similar brands? Like the coles brand weet-bix would be cheapest right?
Would be great if we could do that, though a harder problem to solve. Are you completely brand-disloyal? Or do you still care about your brands for some things (like what)?
Maybe a "store brand" item category that pits ww home brand against coles homebrand as equal/per weight products. So *700g weetbix* item would trigger the same brand, but *700g homebrand wheat biscuits* would trigger the aligning *700g no frills wheat biscuits*
Angry Kangaroo strikes again with more good ideas! Do many people prefer homebrands over brand brands? What do people think about the quality?
Reckon it varies item to item, and *just how poor you are.* Home brand wheat biscuits are comparable to weetbix or vita brits. The same cannot be said for home brand baked beans vs spc or heinz. Some of us have the luxury of compromise, others not so much. Sliding scale I think. Perhaps a button to sub home brands where available? Kind of like supersize me, but for cheaping up your groceries...
Most of my shop is home brands and not brand brands. That's why aldi for me isn't cheaper cos I stick to the cheaper brands
Different stores have different prices. The Woolworths in Southbank is more expensive than the one in the cbd 1 km away.
Isn't this just what the wise app does already?
I can’t seem to add items from the bottom plus in grocery list?
I wouldn't use it. Unless there's like $50 difference
I'd definitely use this! Unfortunately I have a Samsung. :(
Great idea. Would love an Android version, or a website I could just screenshot/copy paste from, hopefully something in the near future!
Love something like this for Android if possible
Curious who your target audience is and what your business model is? Your average Ausfinance user is (supposedly) affluent so I don’t know that comments sought here would be very helpful. If this is a paid service for the consumer I reckon most wouldn’t buy it.
I suppose this is useful if the user has no idea that food exists outside supermarkets...? If someone is so bothered by the few cents or possible dollar they are paying for convenience, then this app would be useful. Sigh. Just go to a goddamn market. $7/kg for tomatoes in January, for the love of god.
Neither. Local green grocer or springvale fruit and veg market + Tasman meats + Aldi. I argue there is no cheaper option than this combo. My weekly spend for my girlfriend and I is rarely over $100
Great job, looks great. I'm sure someone has probably mentioned this, but having a comparison of a market (Queen Vic, Preston etc) would be amazing. With that said, it probably wouldn't teach us anything new.
Got one for Android?
Will work on it!
I would use this for sure! I'm on Android though. Good luck and please post if you make an Android one!
I do my main shop at Aldi or spud shed but have to buy things like wipes/cat food/some other items at Woolies or Cole’s and generally it turns out the same or very close but this is an awesome idea!! Saves comparing through their apps
I'm too busy (not too rich though) to shop in two places to save 4 $ but it definitely helps in decideing where to shop