Grocery and food prices in Pakistan: what the data shows
Is that grocery item a fair price online, and which stores are worth checking?
Written from Dhundo’s own price data. Reviewed 2026-08-09; figures from the 2026-08-08 data snapshot.
Food and grocery is the category with the most storefronts on this site and the loosest boundary. Alongside pantry staples it holds kitchen appliances, bulk packs, supplements and imported specialities, all of which carry food words in their titles and all of which get classified here. That mix is the first thing to understand before reading a single price, because it is why the midpoint of this category is higher than a bag of rice would suggest. This guide reads it across 1,067 listings from 21 stores.
The shape of the market Dhundo can see
Across a sample of 910 food and grocery listings, the midpoint price is Rs 4,500, and eight in ten sit between Rs 475 and Rs 39,999. If that midpoint reads high for groceries, that is the finding, not an error: the category mixes everyday staples with blenders, air fryers, bulk cartons and imported goods, and those pull the middle well above the price of a single pantry item.
The bottom of the band is single staples and small packs - a bag of lentils, a bottle of sauce, a packet of tea. The top is appliances and bulk. Reading the store and the pack size beside the price tells you which of those two shopping trips a listing belongs to, which the rupee figure alone does not.
The category spans 21 distinct storefronts in one sample - the most of any category here - because groceries in Pakistan are retailed by supermarket sites, specialist food shops and the large marketplaces at once, and each is its own storefront.
The gap between two stores on one item
In this sample, 4 items appeared in more than one store under matching titles, with a typical gap of 30.7%. The gap on genuinely matched staples is smaller than in most categories, and that is itself worth knowing: on a branded, packaged good with a fixed size, stores have less room to differ, so the comparison confirms a fair price more often than it uncovers a large saving.
Where the wider gaps appear, it is usually pack size doing the work. A price that looks half another is frequently half the quantity - a five-hundred-gram pack against a kilo, a single unit against a carton. On food more than anywhere, the honest comparison is per unit, and the unit is in the title rather than a field, so reading it is the whole job.
Why pack size decides everything here
A grocery price without its quantity is not a price. Two listings for the same brand of oil can carry very different numbers because one is a litre and one is five, and a comparison that ignores that is comparing nothing. The pack size lives in the title, sometimes buried at the end, and the store beside the price will not normalise it for you.
This is why the category page and a search serve different purposes here. The category page shows you which storefronts stock a kind of food at all. A search for the specific brand and size is what lets you compare like with like - and it is the search, not the browse, that turns this category from a list into a price check.
Using the category page well
The food and grocery category page lists what Dhundo has classified, most confidently classified first, with the store beside each price. Because it draws on the most storefronts of any category, it is the best place here to discover a supermarket or specialist food site you did not know delivered.
Then search the exact brand and pack size. A search reaches stores the category page has never surfaced, because a listing enters the classified set only after somebody has searched for something like it, and grocery is broad enough that much of it is still unsearched.
What the listed price leaves out
Perishability and delivery are the costs this category hides. A price is what the store showed when Dhundo last read the listing, and fresh or short-dated goods move faster than that; the store's page is where the current price and the expiry actually live. Delivery, and any minimum-order threshold a grocery site sets, are added at checkout and are not in these figures.
Stock is the third. Groceries go out of stock and come back at a different price more than durable goods do, so a low figure here is a stronger signal of where to look than a guarantee of what you will pay. Confirm the price, the pack size and the date on the store's own page before you buy. Figures here were computed 2026-06-19.
Food & Grocery on Dhundo, in numbers
Computed from stored listings. Snapshot taken 2026-08-08; newest listing in the sample read 2026-06-19.
- Listings classified here
- 1,067
- Stores in the sample
- 21
- Midpoint price
- Rs 4,500over 910 listings
- Eight in ten sit between
- Rs 475 and Rs 39,999
- Found under the same name in more than one store
- 4 itemstypical gap 30.7%
Every figure above is recomputed on the Food & Grocery category page each time it is served, so that page is always the fresher of the two.
What this guide cannot tell you
It cannot normalise pack size for you. Two listings with matching titles can be a small pack and a large one, and the gap between them is quantity, not saving. The figures here quote the typical gap on matched titles, which still mixes some of that in.
It cannot tell you about freshness, expiry or storage. Those decide whether a food purchase was good, and no price dataset contains them; they live on the store's page and on the packet.
It cannot tell you delivery thresholds or what is in stock. Grocery sites often set a minimum order, and stock turns over quickly. Prices are read from listings; the rest is settled at the store. Figures here were computed 2026-06-19.
Common questions
- Why is the midpoint grocery price higher than a typical pantry item?
- Because the category holds more than pantry staples. Kitchen appliances, bulk packs, supplements and imported goods are all classified as food and grocery, and they pull the midpoint well above the price of a single everyday item like a bag of rice or a bottle of sauce.
- Is the cheapest listing really the cheapest, or is it a smaller pack?
- Often it is a smaller pack. On food the only honest comparison is per unit, and pack size lives in the title rather than a field. A price that looks half another is frequently half the quantity, so read the size before you let the number decide.
- Are these prices current?
- Each price is the one the store showed when Dhundo last read the listing, not a live lookup. Groceries change and go out of stock faster than durable goods, so treat a figure as a strong signal of where to look and confirm it on the store's page before you buy.