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Meal Planning CalculatorEnter your household. See the USDA grocery benchmark, your per-meal cost, and what a plan change would do to your budget.

Your household

Adults, 19-50 Count of household members in this age range.

Adults, 51+ Enter 0 if none.

Teens, 13-18 Enter 0 if none.

Kids, 6-12 Enter 0 if none.

Toddlers, 2-5 Enter 0 if none.

USDA Food Plan level Thrifty is the leanest budget; Liberal assumes the most flexibility. USDA Official Food Plans, U.S. Average, August 2026 (issued September 2026).

Meals cooked at home per week Whole-household meal occasions, not per person. Example: 14 means dinner at home 14 times a week.

Meals eaten out per week Restaurant, takeout, or delivery meal occasions.

Current weekly grocery spend What your household actually spends on groceries in a typical week. National food-at-home prices rose 2.2% year over year as of August 2026 (BLS CPI, released 2026-09-11).

USDA benchmark, your household

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Your spend vs. the benchmark

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	Per person, monthly	Per meal, per person
USDA benchmark	calculating...	calculating...
Your own groceries	calculating...	calculating...

Yearly total at this plan level

calculating... a year at the USDA benchmark for your household. Your own spend, annualized at your current rate, is calculating... a year.

Two levers

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Run the numbers above to see your own grocery benchmark.

This calculator does not judge how your household eats. The USDA Food Plans assume every meal and snack is prepared at home; your own mix of home-cooked and eaten-out meals is normal and this tool simply shows what each choice costs. 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. Curious what a dollar buys compared to a year ago? Try the Inflation Calculator. Not sure what your take-home pay is? Use the Paycheck Calculator.

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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.
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-meal cost divides the weekly USDA benchmark by household size times 21 (3 meals a day, 7 days a week), USDA's own basis for the Food Plans. Your own per-meal cost divides your current weekly grocery spend by your entered home-cooked meal occasions times household size, assuming each home-cooked meal serves the whole household.
Plan-level lever is the dollar difference between your selected plan level's monthly benchmark and the next level down, using the same household composition and size adjustment.
Home-cooked-meal lever prices two additional weekly meal occasions at your selected plan level's own per-meal, per-person rate, showing what that shift would add to a grocery budget built on the USDA benchmark rather than assuming a specific restaurant cost.
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 do the two USDA reports use slightly different age ranges?

USDA's Thrifty Food Plan was reevaluated in 2021 and uses a 14-19 teen band and a 20-50 adult band. The Low-Cost, Moderate, and Liberal plans still run on their 2007 basis, using 14-18 and 19-50. This one-year boundary difference between USDA's own two report series is real, not a typo, and this calculator uses each report's own bands for its own plan level rather than forcing them to match.

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.