Free · USDA Food Plans · No Signup
Grocery Budget CalculatorEnter your household. See the USDA monthly and weekly grocery budget, and your per-person daily cost.
Enter at least one household member above to see your grocery budget.
USDA budget, your household
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Your spend vs. the budget
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| Per person, monthly | Per person, per day |
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| USDA budget | calculating... | calculating... |
| Your own groceries | calculating... | calculating... |
Where the budget comes from
Each age bracket's own dollar contribution to your monthly USDA budget, after the household-size adjustment below.
Run the numbers above to see your own grocery budget.
This calculator does not judge how your household shops or eats; it simply shows what the USDA's own national benchmark looks like for your household size and plan level. Want a per-meal breakdown and levers like cooking more at home instead? Try the Meal Planning Calculator. Curious how groceries fit into your whole monthly budget? Try the Personal Budget Calculator. Cooking for a crowd and want per-dish menu pricing? Try the Recipe Cost Worksheet.
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How this is calculated
Reviewed by the FigureNerd small-business team. Built directly around the USDA Official Food Plans, with grocery-inflation context sourced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About FigureNerd →
- USDA Food Plans are four monthly grocery benchmarks (Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate, Liberal) published by USDA's Food and Nutrition Administration, assuming every meal and snack is prepared at home. This calculator uses the August 2026 report (issued September 2026), the most recent available, the same source and figures as the Meal Planning Calculator.
- Age brackets in this calculator (toddlers 2-5, kids 6-12, teens 13-18, adults 19-50, adults 51+) are built from USDA's own age-sex rows, averaged where USDA splits by sex or by a narrower age band, since asking a household calculator visitor to sort each family member by sex adds friction without much accuracy gain. USDA's Thrifty Food Plan (2021 basis) uses 14-19 and 20-50 for its teen and adult bands; the Low-Cost, Moderate, and Liberal plans (2007 basis) use 14-18 and 19-50. This one-year boundary difference between USDA's own two report series is real and is used as-is for each plan's own bracket, not forced to match.
- Household-size adjustment follows USDA's own published rule: sum each household member's bracket cost, then adjust the total by household size (1-person add 20%, 2-person add 10%, 3-person add 5%, 4-person no change, 5- or 6-person subtract 5%, 7-or-more subtract 10%).
- Per-person, per-day cost divides the monthly per-person figure by an average of 30.4375 days a month (365.25 divided by 12), a calendar conversion, not a USDA-published figure. Your own per-person, per-day figure divides your entered current monthly spend the same way.
- Weekly figure divides the monthly benchmark by 4.333 (USDA's own weeks-per-month basis for the Food Plans, the same conversion the Meal Planning Calculator uses in reverse).
- Budget breakdown chart shows each present age bracket's own dollar contribution to the monthly total: count times that bracket's USDA rate, times the same household-size adjustment factor applied to the whole household, so the bars sum to the monthly figure above.
- Accuracy check: two adults (19-50) plus two kids (ages 6-8 and 9-11, this calculator's "kids 6-12" bracket) at the Thrifty level, household size four with no size adjustment, reproduces USDA's own published Reference Family figure of $1,023.70 a month exactly.
- Grocery inflation note: BLS CPI-U Food at Home index (series CUUR0000SAF11) rose from 314.608 in August 2025 to 321.500 in August 2026, up 2.19% year over year. Source: BLS public data API, series CUUR0000SAF11. Release: BLS CPI news release for August 2026 (USDL-26-1496), released 2026-09-11.
- USDA source PDFs, opened directly: Thrifty Food Plan, August 2026 and Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost, and Liberal Food Plans, August 2026, both from USDA's monthly Cost of Food reports index.
- This is an educational estimation tool, not nutrition or financial advice. Your own household's needs, local prices, and preferences may reasonably differ from a national benchmark.
| Age bracket | Thrifty | Low-Cost | Moderate | Liberal |
|---|
| Toddlers, 2-5 | $180.45 | $176.15 | $214.25 | $259.95 |
| Kids, 6-12 | $225.55 | $266.45 | $327.00 | $381.85 |
| Teens, 13-18 | $267.18 | $294.73 | $360.08 | $433.60 |
| Adults, 19-50 | $286.30 | $296.45 | $367.10 | $457.50 |
| Adults, 51+ | $261.55 | $282.93 | $349.88 | $422.45 |
Common questions
What are the USDA Food Plans?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes four monthly benchmark grocery budgets, Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate, and Liberal, for a nutritious diet with all meals and snacks prepared at home. They are updated monthly using the Consumer Price Index and are the basis for SNAP benefit calculations.
Why does this calculator average ages instead of asking for sex?
USDA's own tables break some age groups out by sex. A household grocery calculator asking a visitor to sort each family member by sex adds friction without much accuracy gain, so this tool averages the male and female USDA rows for each age bracket. That averaging is a simplification, disclosed here and in the methodology section, not a hidden assumption.
Why show a per-person, per-day cost instead of a per-meal cost?
This calculator is built around the whole household's monthly and weekly budget rather than individual meal occasions, so it divides the budget by household size and then by an average of 30.4375 days a month (365.25 divided by 12), a calendar conversion rather than a USDA figure. Looking for a per-meal breakdown instead? The Meal Planning Calculator uses the same USDA data with a per-meal, per-person view.
Is this calculator a substitute for a dietitian or financial advisor?
No. It is an educational estimation tool built on USDA's own published benchmark, not personalized nutrition or financial advice. Your own household's needs, local prices, and preferences may reasonably differ from a national benchmark.