With food prices remaining high, Americans are watching their budgets closely this Thanksgiving season.
Many households are rethinking how they prep for the holiday table. Whether you’re hosting a full spread or just bringing a dish, finding a budget-friendly grocery store could help you save.
And where you shop can make a real difference.
To help consumers shop wisely, online lender NetCredit compared the prices of Thanksgiving dinner essentials at major national and regional grocery chains across the U.S. and ranked the cheapest turkeys, the cheapest store for each ingredient and the cheapest stores overall.
What we did.
We built a list of ingredients for the main Thanksgiving dishes, retrieved the prices of these items from a major ZIP code in three of the biggest states each store operates in and calculated the average. Then, we calculated the average price of a Thanksgiving dinner at each store based on the ingredients needed to serve six to eight people.
Key Findings
- The cost of Thanksgiving dinner for six to eight people is $52.74 at Walmart — $8.05 less than its nearest competitor (H-E-B) charges for the same list of items.
- Walmart is cheapest for 10 out of 19 Thanksgiving ingredients.
- Target is cheapest for cinnamon and sweet potatoes.
- Walmart, Target and Fred Meyer are among nine leading grocery stores where a turkey costs under $12.
Walmart Thanksgiving meal 26.0% cheaper than rivals — but the official Holiday Meal Basket includes fewer items than previous years.
First, we created a hypothetical basket of Thanksgiving essentials: whole turkey, Yukon Gold potatoes, stuffing (one box), condensed cream of mushroom soup (one can), green beans (one can), fried onions, butter, milk, eggs (one dozen), pumpkin (one can), cinnamon, pecans, vanilla extract, corn, cranberry sauce (one can), dinner rolls, sweet potatoes and brown sugar.
We then priced up this basket at multiple branches of the top grocery stores. The cheapest we found was Walmart, where the bill came to $52.74 on average. This is 13.2% cheaper than the second-most affordable store, H-E-B ($60.79) and 26.0% cheaper than the average total of the 19 stores in our study.
Four of the six cheapest stores are subsidiaries of the Kroger family, and the seventh, Central Market, is operated by the private owners of H-E-B. Both brands operate exclusively in Texas within the U.S.
Separately from our own example basket, Walmart has brought back its $40 annual Thanksgiving meal, a fixed basket of goods said to serve 10 people. However, consumers have been quick to note that the apparent 25% price reduction on last year’s Walmart meal can be explained by the drop from 21 to 15 items.
The Walmart set deal may make sense for some households, but consumers should take care both that they need every item in the set basket and that there is nothing excluded from the basket that they need — or the Walmart deal could end up proving to be false savings.
Target and H-E-B among stores offering cheapest individual ingredients.
Next, we isolated the ingredients to find the cheapest grocery chain to shop for each one, should you have time to make multiple visits. Naturally, with Walmart being around 26.0% cheaper than the competition overall, the store performs well here: nine of our 18 essentials were cheapest at Walmart, with a tenth — stuffing (one box) — joint cheapest at Walmart and H-E-B.
Texas Thanksgiving celebrants get a good break, since the locally operating H-E-B chain offers three of the 18 items cheaper than any other major U.S. grocer except for Walmart, which is tied cheapest with H-E-B for stuffing.
Target is cheapest for two essential Fall flavors: cinnamon and sweet potatoes, which home cooks might like to incorporate into a pumpkin pie or a sweet potato casserole. The chain also offers a seven-item, four-person Thanksgiving meal bundle for under $20 (pre-tax).
Nearly half the big stores offer a $12 turkey — Walmart’s is cheapest.
Finally, we shopped around for frozen 12-pound Turkeys from the 19 grocery stores in our study. Walmart’s bird was cheapest by more than 50¢, coming in at $11.12 against H-E-B’s $11.64 turkey.
Seven stores, including Target and multiple Kroger brands (although not Kroger itself), have battled each other down to an $11.88 turkey. Chicago’s Jewel-Osco, Vons in California and Nevada and Southern California Kroger brand Ralphs all sell their birds for upwards of $20.
In 2025, the U.S. turkey population has fallen to a 40-year low of 195 million, which is 3% lower than in 2024. Disease, including bird flu, has reduced turkey stock both directly and through the fall in egg production.
The wholesale price per pound has risen by around 40% year-over-year. Although there should be no shortage of turkeys available in the shops, consumers may experience the knock-on effects of wholesale pricing changes at some stores. All the same, Walmart claims to be selling turkey at its cheapest rate since 2019 and is among several chains that appear happy to take a hit on low turkey prices if it draws festive shoppers into their stores.
How to save money on Thanksgiving dinner.
Family and friend expectations can be high around Thanksgiving mealtimes. As hard as you try to remember that the most important elements are good cheer and gratitude, there are always traditional ingredients that feel impossible to leave out. Try these tips to have as complete a Thanksgiving dinner as possible without exceeding your budget.
- Prepare before you shop. Ask your guests what they like most and consider leaving one or two dishes off your shopping list.
- Calculate your turkey size. Use Butterball’s calculator to find what size bird will fill your brood.
- Shop efficiently. Shop with a list and a budget, on a full stomach and beware of enticing deals or extras you don’t really need.
- Go for store brands. A Wells Fargo report revealed that shopping for private-label (store brand) Thanksgiving goods rather than national brands delivers savings of around 16% overall — with bigger savings on specific items like stuffing, dinner rolls and gravy mix.
- Shop around. As our study shows, stores like Walmart may feature ‘loss leaders,’ such as cheap turkey, to draw you into their store — but if you’ve time to go elsewhere too, you can find some of the trimmings cheaper.
Despite challenges with the economy and the turkey trade, making Thanksgiving dinner affordable needn’t be difficult.
Methodology
To discover the most affordable grocery stores for Thanksgiving dinner, we sourced the prices of ingredients from the major national and regional chains across America.
First, we built a seed list of the ingredients needed for the main Thanksgiving dishes:
- Roast turkey – 12-pound turkey
- Roast turkey – Yukon Gold potatoes
- Roast turkey – stuffing (one box)
- Green bean casserole – condensed cream of mushroom soup (one can)
- Green bean casserole – green beans (one can)
- Green bean casserole – fried onions
- Pumpkin pie – pumpkin (one can)
- Pumpkin pie – cinnamon
- Pumpkin pie – pecans
- Pumpkin pie – vanilla extract
- Side dish – corn
- Side dish – cranberry sauce (one can)
- Side dish – dinner rolls
- Sweet potato casserole – sweet potatoes
- Sweet potato casserole – brown sugar
- General cooking – butter
- General cooking – milk
- General cooking – eggs (one dozen)
Next, we retrieved the prices of these items from a major ZIP code in three of the biggest states each store operates in and calculated the average.
We then calculated the average price of a Thanksgiving dinner at each store based on the ingredients needed to serve six to eight people.
Data is correct as of November 2025.
DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, tax or legal advice.
