Sainsbury vs Waitrose | Which One Is Cheaper & Better For You?

Most grocery shoppers have heard of both Waitrose and Sainsbury. Each grocery store sells hundreds of thousands of products each year to their customers. However, despite their individual success, most people heavily debate which one is better. To help settle this debate, I’ve decided to look into both stores in terms of their:

  • Price
  • Quality

If you are one of those shoppers who has trouble deciding between which one of these stores is better, keep reading. By the end of this article, you should have a much better idea as to which one of these grocery stores is better for you.

Which one is better: Waitrose or Sainsbury? In terms of price, Sainsbury offers cheaper products. Sainsbury’s products are anywhere from 1% to 45% cheaper than Waitrose. Additionally, Sainsbury has slightly higher product quality compared to Waitrose, according to the Food Standards Agency.

Below is a further breakdown showing the differences in price as well as the breakdown of product quality analysis.

Which One Is Cheaper: Waitrose vs Sainsbury

The price of goods at a grocery store is one of the most important decision making factors. Most customers want to save as much money as they can when they go grocery shopping. So, it is important to have a look at which store is cheaper between Waitrose and Sainsbury.

To see which store has better prices, I recorded each price for the most commonly purchased store brand items and then averaged those prices out. This way I was able to have a more apples to apples comparison when looking at each price category. Below are my findings.

Sainsbury is anywhere from 1% to 45% cheaper than Waitrose for a majority of commonly purchased storebrand items.

More specifically, Sainsbury is cheaper in the egg, bread, canned goods, and milk categories. Waitrose is only cheaper in the beverages and frozen vegetables category. I created a chart below to better express what the price differences are between each grocery store.

Which Store Has Better Quality: Waitrose vs Sainsbury

Product quality is yet another major decision making factor when deciding between two grocery stores. So to see which grocery store has higher quality products, I checked out the Food Standards Agency’s recall database.

This database shows how many recent product recalls a store has had. By seeing how many recalls a store has had, it makes it a bit easier to see which one has higher quality products.

Sainsbury has slightly higher quality products than Waitrose. Waitrose has had 46 recent product recalls, whereas Sainsbury has had 43 recent recalls. While both of these numbers are quite close, this does show that Sainsbury does have slightly higher product quality.

Final Thoughts: Waitrose vs Sainsbury

It is clear for this analysis that Sainsbury does seem to have the advantage. However, it should be noted that both stores are great to buy products from. Despite their differences in price, they are both still considered affordable. And despite their differences in product quality, they are both still very safe to shop at. No matter which one you choose, you will be in very good hands.