Store Brand vs Name Brand: Where the Savings Actually Are
Where this comparison comes from
Our pricing engine matches every recipe ingredient to a specific product on a specific store's shelf and picks the cheapest acceptable one. So it makes the store-brand-or-not decision thousands of times, with real prices attached. This post reports what those decisions look like in aggregate, and where the house label stops winning.
The dataset is 790 fully priced recipe baskets at Kroger store 01400513 in July 2026, containing 7,266 matched product lines. On 163 of those lines we captured the full shelf candidate list, letting us set the chosen store-brand product beside the cheapest comparable name brand. That paired subset is what the percentages below describe. For the store-to-store version, see pricing the same recipes at two stores.
The headline: 32% cheaper, on 91% of pairs
Across the 163 matched pairs, the store-brand product cost a median of 32% less per unit than the cheapest comparable name brand. The middle half of pairs ran between 20% and 42% cheaper. The store brand was the cheaper option in 91% of pairs, and more expensive in 9%.
Those figures are per unit, not per package, which matters. Comparing a 12 oz house can against a 16 oz national can on sticker price alone flatters whichever happens to be smaller. Every gap below is price per ounce, fluid ounce, or count, with package sizes required to be within 45% of each other before we compare at all.
Twelve real pairs, priced the same day
Percentages are easy to argue with, so here are actual products at actual shelf prices, same store, same day. These are not cherry-picked extremes. They are common recipe ingredients sitting near the middle of the distribution, priced per unit rather than per package.
| Ingredient | Store brand | Name brand | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soy sauce, less sodium | Kroger, 10 fl oz, $1.49 | Kikkoman, 10 fl oz, $2.99 | 50% |
| Condensed tomato soup | Kroger, 10.75 oz, $0.79 | Campbell's, 10.75 oz, $1.50 | 47% |
| Canned whole kernel corn | Kroger, 15.25 oz, $1.00 | Del Monte, 15.25 oz, $1.89 | 47% |
| Boneless skinless chicken breast | Heritage Farm, 1 lb, $2.89 | Perdue, 1 lb, $4.99 | 42% |
| Shredded mozzarella | Kroger, 8 oz, $2.00 | Kraft, 8 oz, $3.29 | 39% |
| Whole grain spaghetti | Kroger, 16 oz, $1.33 | Barilla, 16 oz, $1.99 | 33% |
| Dark red kidney beans | Kroger, 15.5 oz, $1.00 | Bush's, 16 oz, $1.49 | 31% |
| Plain nonfat Greek yogurt | Kroger, 32 oz, $4.79 | Chobani, 32 oz, $6.79 | 29% |
| Plain bread crumbs | Kroger, 15 oz, $1.99 | Progresso, 15 oz, $2.79 | 29% |
| Whole peeled tomatoes | Kroger, 28 oz, $1.89 | Red Gold, 28 oz, $2.49 | 24% |
| Frozen cut green beans | Kroger, 12 oz, $1.29 | Birds Eye, 10 oz, $1.39 | 23% |
| Pure corn starch | Kroger, 16 oz, $2.29 | Argo, 16 oz, $2.69 | 15% |
Source: CentsPerServing product matching, Kroger store 01400513, July 2026. Gap is the per-unit difference, so it can differ from the sticker-price difference when package sizes differ.
The savings are not evenly spread
Category matters more than most shopping advice admits. Dry pantry goods, condiments, and dairy carry the widest gaps, because those shelves are full of commodities where the house version is functionally the same thing. Frozen vegetables and meat carry the narrowest gaps.
Median per-unit discount versus the cheapest comparable name brand, by ingredient category. Source: CentsPerServing product matching, Kroger store 01400513, July 2026. Category samples range from 6 to 48 pairs, so treat the small ones as directional.
Not every store brand is the discount brand
This is the finding most shopping guides miss, and it is the one worth acting on. A supermarket does not run one house label. It runs a tiered portfolio, and the tiers behave completely differently on price. Lumping them together as "store brand" hides most of the decision.
Split our pairs by label and the gap moves sharply. The base Kroger label ran a median 33.3% below the comparable name brand across 119 pairs. Simple Truth Organic ran 20.0% below across 22 pairs. Private Selection, the premium line, ran 18.6% below across 11 pairs. The value label, Smart Way, ran further below still on the few pairs where it appeared.
Put plainly: the premium house label gives back roughly half the discount that made store brands worth buying. If you switched to store brands to save money and reached for the fancier-looking house package, you took the smaller half.
Where the name brand actually won
In 9% of pairs the national product was cheaper per unit, and those losses are not random. They land almost entirely on the retailer's own premium and organic tiers, or on national brands running a deep price on a commodity item that week.
Concrete examples from the same store, same day: La Choy sliced water chestnuts at $1.39 for 8 oz beat the Kroger can at $1.49. Hunt's fire roasted diced tomatoes at $1.59 for 14.5 oz beat Simple Truth Organic at $2.29. Tyson boneless skinless chicken breast at $4.49 a pound beat the Simple Truth version at $5.49.
Notice the pattern in two of those three: the losing store product is an organic or premium-tier item compared against a conventional national one. That is a specification difference, not a brand-value failure.
Some ingredients have no house version at all
Roughly one line in seven across the full dataset landed on a national brand simply because nothing comparable from the house label was available or in stock. Those cases repeat, which makes them easy to plan around rather than fight at the shelf.
The most frequent were single spices, where McCormick was the chosen product on 122 lines, led by ground cumin. Tortillas went to Mission on 41 lines. Fresh packaged herbs, grated parmesan, margarine, and boxed broths also skewed national. Here the saving move is a larger size or a different format, not hunting for a house label that is not there.
Produce is the category this question skips
Brand tier only exists where a brand exists. In produce, most items are sold loose or in unbranded bags, so only 26.5% of our produce picks carried any store brand at all. Compare that with frozen at 96.3%, dairy at 81.9%, dry grains at 79.8%, and canned goods at 77.1%.
The practical reading: on the store perimeter, brand choice is not your lever. Package size, form, and whether the item gets used before it spoils are. On the interior aisles, brand tier is the fastest way to cut a line item without changing what you cook. Our breakdown of what 712 dinners actually cost shows how much of a basket sits on those interior shelves.
What it adds up to on a real basket
On the individual lines where we could compare directly, the median swap was small in isolation and meaningful in bulk: $2.49 for the store-brand item against $3.99 for the name-brand equivalent, a difference of $1.29 on a single product. Multiply that across a cart.
Scale that up. Store brands took 57.5% of all 7,266 product picks and 63.3% of basket dollars. The median basket was 65% store brand by dollars, and 73.5% of the 790 baskets were majority store brand. On the median 4-serving basket of $24.85, about $15.70 sat on store-brand items.
Replace every one of those lines with its cheapest name-brand equivalent at the observed 32% median gap and that portion costs roughly $23 instead of $15.70, pushing the basket toward $32. That figure is an extrapolation from two measured numbers, not a directly measured basket, so treat it as an order of magnitude: about $7 on a $25 basket.
How this squares with the outside numbers
Our 32% median sits at the top of the published range, which is what you would expect from a method that always compares against the cheapest acceptable name brand rather than an average of them. It is close enough to independent estimates to be reassuring rather than surprising.
Consumer Reports reported in May 2026 that private-label products typically sell 25% to 30% below their name-brand counterparts, and that private label accounted for 24% of US grocery purchases as of March 2026, up from 17.7% at the end of 2021. The Private Label Manufacturers Association, an industry trade group, put store-brand sales at $282.8 billion for the 52 weeks ending December 28, 2025, growing 3.3% against 1.2% for national brands.
How to run this check yourself
The method here is not complicated, and it is worth doing on the ten or fifteen items you buy most. Divide price by net weight or count for both products, compare those numbers rather than the stickers, and note which house tier you are holding: base label, value label, or premium line.
Then check whether the swap is a specification change. Organic against conventional, or 93/7 ground turkey against 85/15, is a different product, not a worse deal. Otherwise this data says one thing: for commodity interior-aisle goods, the base house label is the default, and the name brand carries the burden of justifying its gap. Our cost per serving primer carries that arithmetic through to what a meal costs, and the rest of the Compare series covers the other levers.
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Price a recipeFAQ
How much cheaper are store brands than name brands?
Across 163 matched product pairs at a Kroger store in July 2026, the store brand was cheaper by a median of 32% per unit, and cheaper in 91% of pairs. The middle half of pairs ran 20% to 42% cheaper. Consumer Reports reported a similar range in May 2026, putting private-label prices typically 25% to 30% below name brands.
Is the store brand always the cheapest option?
No. In 9% of our matched pairs the name brand was cheaper per unit. The losses cluster in two places: the retailer's premium and organic sub-labels, and categories where a national brand runs a deep promotion, such as La Choy water chestnuts at $1.39 against the Kroger 8 oz can at $1.49.
Which grocery categories have the biggest store-brand savings?
In our pairs the widest gaps were in condiments (37.7% median), dry pantry goods (36.3%), and dairy (33.4%). The narrowest were frozen vegetables (22.7%) and meat (24.3%), where national brands price closer to the house label.
Are premium store brands like Private Selection still cheaper?
They are cheaper than comparable name brands, but by much less. The base Kroger label ran a median 33.3% below the name-brand equivalent in our data, while Simple Truth Organic ran 20.0% below and Private Selection 18.6% below. The discount tier and the premium tier are not the same trade.
How much does buying store brands save on a whole grocery basket?
On the individual lines where we could compare directly, the median swap saved $1.29 on one item ($2.49 versus $3.99). Scaled across a median 4-serving recipe basket of $24.85, where store brands accounted for 63% of the spend, switching every one of those lines to the name-brand equivalent would add roughly $7 to the receipt.
Why does produce barely show up in store-brand comparisons?
Most produce is sold loose or unbranded, so brand tier does not apply. Only 26.5% of our produce picks carried a store brand, against 96.3% in frozen and 81.9% in dairy. In produce the lever is form and package size, not the label.
Which ingredients did a name brand win outright?
The most common were ground cumin and other single spices (McCormick), corn and flour tortillas (Mission), fresh herbs sold in clamshells, grated parmesan, and margarine. In those cases the store either had no comparable house product in stock or priced it above the national one.
How were these store-brand comparisons measured?
Every pair comes from a real product search at one Kroger store in July 2026. We compared each chosen store-brand product to the cheapest name-brand candidate for the same ingredient, requiring package sizes within 45% of each other and at least three shared descriptive words, then compared price per ounce, per fluid ounce, or per count.
Data: CentsPerServing product matching, Kroger store 01400513, July 2026 - 790 fully priced recipe baskets, 7,266 matched product lines, 163 store-brand versus name-brand pairs with full shelf candidate sets. External figures: Consumer Reports, "How Store-Brand Groceries Can Help You Save," May 4, 2026; Private Label Manufacturers Association 2026 Private Label Report (52 weeks ending December 28, 2025), an industry trade association. Store prices change without notice and vary by location. This article reports our own measurements and is not financial advice.