Grocery price history in Australia
See 52 weeks of price history on 74,000+ Australian grocery products. How price history helps you spot real deals and avoid fake ones.
Pinch is an Australian price tracking app that gives you 52 weeks of grocery price history on 74,000+ products across Coles, Woolworths, ALDI, and Harris Farm. No other Australian grocery app offers this level of price transparency. Price history reveals whether a product is genuinely discounted or just cycling through an artificial pricing pattern. A product advertised as "on sale for $3" looks different once you see it cost $3 regularly every second week for the past year.
What price history reveals
Most grocery prices aren't static. They follow predictable patterns: a product costs $5 for two weeks, drops to $3 for one week, then back to $5. Repeated dozens of times. Without price history, you see only the current price. With 52 weeks of data, you see the complete pattern.
Price history shows you three things retailers don't advertise.
Seasonal trends
Some products are cheaper in season. Berries cost more in winter and less in summer. Barbecue meat drops before Christmas. Soup ingredients peak in winter. A 52-week history shows you exactly when each product hits its low point. If you can wait, you plan your shopping around those windows.
Hi-lo pricing patterns
Around 42% of Coles products and 35% of Woolworths products cycle through artificial price swings of 15% or more on a repeating schedule. The pattern is mechanical: normal price, raise price for two weeks, put on special at the normal price, repeat. Without history, you can't see the game. With history, it becomes obvious.
Genuine sales versus illusory discounts
The ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry (2025) documented that retailers systematically inflate regular prices, then advertise those inflated prices as specials. A product might have cost $2.50 eight weeks ago, gets marked up to $4, then advertised as "on sale for $3". The sale is marketing fiction. Price history shows you what the product actually cost recently. You can't be fooled by a discount once you know the recent history.
Why 52 weeks matters
One week of price data tells you almost nothing. Four weeks might show you a random dip. Thirteen weeks might capture one seasonal shift. Fifty-two weeks shows you the complete pattern: every season, every cycle, every promotion. It's the difference between suspicion and certainty.
Most grocery tools don't track history at all. Some show price comparisons between shops this week. Pinch shows you this product's price trajectory over a full year. That's a fundamentally different kind of data.
How Pinch builds price history
Pinch tracks prices at Coles, Woolworths, ALDI, and Harris Farm continuously. Every product is recorded weekly. Those records accumulate into a 52-week rolling window. Over time, the history builds. A new product starts with one week of data. By week 52, you have a complete year to analyse.
You see the actual prices retailers published, not estimated or averaged prices. This is real transactional pricing data, not modelled or inferred.
Practical examples of using price history
Here's how price history changes shopping decisions.
Example one: chicken breast
Chicken breast has been cycling between $8 per 200g and $6 per 200g for the past year. It's on special this week for $6. Without history, you might think "great, buying chicken on sale". With history, you know $6 is the normal special price and $8 is the inflated weeks. You don't rush. You buy it regularly at $6, and avoid the $8 weeks. Over a year, that's meaningful savings.
Example two: pasta sauce
A branded pasta sauce has been steadily dropping. It cost $3.50 six months ago, $3.20 three months ago, and $2.90 now. The trend is clear: this product is getting cheaper. You buy more now than you did three months ago, knowing it's cheaper than recent history. You might also check if the bottle size has changed (shrinkflation), but the price history is your signal to stock up before the next price change.
Example three: berries
Blueberries are expensive right now ($7 per punnet). Looking back 52 weeks, they were $3.50 six months ago. You know they'll drop again when the season comes back. You plan your berry consumption around that seasonal window. You avoid buying berries in the expensive months.
Why no other Australian tool offers this
Price history requires infrastructure. You need to record prices consistently, store them reliably, and make them queryable. Most grocery price apps focus on today's best deals or comparing shops this week. Pinch built the data infrastructure to store, track, and show price history. That's the differentiator. You get a year of real prices for every product you search.
Start using price history to save
Stop being fooled by specials. See 52 weeks of real prices on 74,000+ Australian groceries and spot the patterns retailers use. Time your shopping to the cheap weeks, avoid the inflated weeks, and understand which sales are genuine and which are just marketing.
Download Pinch (free on iOS, Android coming soon). No ads. No data selling.
Methodology
- Data source: Pinch price tracking database, 74,000+ products, 4 major Australian retailers (Coles, Woolworths, ALDI, Harris Farm), 52 weeks of weekly price records
- Cycle analysis: Products flagged as cycling where price variance exceeds 15% on a repeating pattern (Coles 42.3%, Woolworths 35.3% as of May 2026)
- Reference: ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry Final Report, 2025
- Data date: Tracking analysis through May 2026