What does a pound of tomatoes cost this week in American grocery ads? This page answers that question for 48 common vegetables, fruits and herbs, in US dollars, using the prices grocery chains themselves advertise. Every figure comes from the USDA’s weekly retail report, so you can see which crops are cheap this week, which are climbing, and which are expensive enough that growing your own starts to pay. One honest warning before the tables: these are advertised prices, the specials in the weekly circulars and online promotions, not the everyday shelf price at any single store.
Vegetable prices per pound
Average advertised price per pound in USD, weighted by the number of ads at each price. The Ads column shows how many advertisements sit behind the figure, and the movement figure compares this week with last week. Use the chips to filter to the expensive rows and the current risers and fallers.
Sold by the pack or piece
Some produce is advertised by the pack, the bag or the piece instead of by weight: a 5 lb bag of potatoes, a pint of blueberries, one pineapple. Those prices sit here, at the price you actually pay for one, with the form named in the Sold as column.
How to read this page
These are advertised prices, not shelf prices. The USDA collects the prices grocery retailers promote in their weekly circulars and digital offers. A special is usually below the regular shelf price, so treat each figure as the going deal price across the country that week, not a promise of the price at your store.
The average is weighted by ads. A price advertised by two thousand stores counts for more than a price advertised by fifty. That weighting is why the Ads column matters: a figure built on thousands of ads is a solid national signal, while one built on a few dozen ads can jump around.
One standard form per vegetable. Each row tracks the form the crop is most often sold in: per pound where it is mainly sold loose, or one standard pack where it is not. The form never changes from week to week, so the trend always compares like with like. Carrots, for example, are tracked as whole carrots in bags, not as baby peeled carrots, which are a different product.
A quiet week is an honest gap. When a vegetable is barely advertised in a given week, its row keeps the last solid price and labels it with the date it was last advertised. No gap is ever filled with a guess, and out of season rows, such as nectarines in November, can sit quiet for months.
Movement compares this week with last week. The pill beside each price is the change against the previous week’s average for the same form. The small trend line gains one point every week, so it becomes a season picture as the weeks build up.
Conventional produce, national coverage. The tables use the USDA’s conventional summary, which covers the continental United States and does not include Alaska and Hawaii. Organic lines are reported separately by the USDA and are not mixed into these averages.
Grow it or buy it?
The per pound table is a gardening tool as much as a shopping one. Crops that hold a high advertised price even on special, such as asparagus, chili peppers, grapes and green beans, repay the space they take in a garden bed, because a healthy plant produces them for weeks at little more than the cost of water and compost. Crops at the bottom of the table, such as potatoes, onions and cabbage, are cheap because large farms grow them so efficiently; grow those for flavour, freshness and variety, not for savings.
A practical rule from these numbers: if a crop you eat every week sits above about $3 per pound and grows in your zone, it belongs on your planting list. Check your zone with the Planting Zone Finder, then match the crop to your season.
Where the prices come from
Every figure on this page comes from the National Retail Report published by the Agricultural Marketing Service of the US Department of Agriculture. The USDA surveys the circulars and digital promotions of major grocery outlets across the country every week and publishes the advertised prices each Friday, weighted by how many ads ran at each price. It is a US government report, free for anyone to read, and it is the same source journalists use when they write about grocery prices.
Once a week our own collector reads the new report, works each tracked vegetable back to its standard form, and redraws the two tables on our server. The tables are then embedded into this page as finished tables, so what you see is exactly what the latest report says. If a collection run ever fails, the page keeps showing the last good tables instead of going blank.
Questions
How often are these prices updated?
Once a week. The USDA publishes its retail report on Friday, US time, and the tables on this page are rebuilt from each new report. The line above each table shows the report date and the ad period it covers, which is the stretch of days in which the advertised prices ended.
Are these the prices on the shelf at my store?
No. These are advertised prices: the specials grocery chains promote in their weekly circulars and online offers, averaged across the whole country and weighted by the number of ads. Your store’s shelf price for the same vegetable can be higher or lower, and a local special can beat the national figure. Use the page to see what a fair deal price looks like this week, and how prices are moving.
Why is a vegetable missing, or showing an old date?
A row appears once a vegetable has been advertised enough in a week to price it solidly. After that the row stays, and in a week with too few ads it keeps its last price, labelled with the date it was last advertised. Seasonal crops can sit quiet for months: nectarines and watermelons barely advertise in November, while pumpkins take over the ads in October.
What does the weighted average mean?
It means each advertised price counts in proportion to how many stores ran it. If one chain advertises tomatoes at $1.50 per pound in 2,000 ads and another advertises $2.50 in 100 ads, the average lands close to $1.50, because that is the price most shoppers were actually offered. The Ads column in the per pound table shows how many advertisements sit behind each figure.
Why do some vegetables sit in a second table?
Some produce is advertised by the pack, the bag or the piece, not by weight: a 5 lb bag of potatoes, a pint of blueberries, a whole cauliflower. Turning those into a per pound figure would need a conversion the advertisers themselves do not use, so they get their own table at the price you actually pay for one, with the form named in the Sold as column.
