How to compare grocery prices in the UAE before you shop

Comparing grocery prices across a few supermarkets used to mean visiting each one, or trusting a single headline discount. The Ministry of Economy and Tourism now runs a free tool that does the comparison for you. This guide is about using it well, and about the one habit, checking the unit price, that matters more than any single tool.

It is general consumer information, not legal advice.

The Essential Goods Prices Platform

The Ministry of Economy and Tourism launched the Essential Goods Prices Platform on 19 April 2026. It is free, needs no login, and lets you compare the price of an everyday item across 12 of the country's major retail outlets. In its first phase it tracks 33 items: 17 basic consumer goods and 16 other widely bought products, including cooking oil, eggs, dairy, rice, sugar, poultry, bread, fruit and vegetables.

Using it is simple: go to moet.gov.ae/en/essential-goods-prices-platform, find the item you want by category, and see what it costs across the tracked retailers. The platform also lets you build a basket of several items to see a fuller picture of where your usual shop works out cheapest.

Why a bigger pack is not automatically better value

This is the single most useful habit in grocery shopping, and it is also the point the platform's own data makes directly. In August 2026, the Ministry's own published monthly data showed basmati rice averaging around AED 16.62 per kilogram at the 1kg pack size, and around AED 9.11 per kilogram at the 5kg size, across the tracked retailers that month.

This is exactly why unit pricing exists as a rule, not just a habit. Ministerial Decision No. 245 of 2024 requires retail stores and digital traders with more than 1,000 square metres of physical space to display a price per kilogram, per 100 grams, per litre, or per 100 millilitres, next to the shelf price, for basic consumer goods and household cleaning products. The point of a unit price is to let you compare a 500g pack against a 2kg pack on the same basis, without doing the maths yourself.

Why some items have a price ceiling

Separately from the comparison platform, Cabinet Decision No. 120 of 2022 names nine essential goods, cooking oil, eggs, dairy products, rice, sugar, poultry, legumes, bread and wheat, whose retail price cannot be raised without the Ministry's prior approval. This is a different mechanism from the price-comparison platform and from unit pricing: it is a ceiling on how fast prices can rise for these specific items, not a rule about how prices are displayed.

Building a more meaningful comparison before you shop

1. Decide what you are actually comparing. Same brand, same pack size, same product is the only truly fair comparison. The platform groups items by category, so check you are looking at a genuinely comparable item before trusting the price gap.
2. Check the unit price, not just the shelf price, especially when comparing different pack sizes of the same item.
3. Treat a promotional price as temporary. A seasonal sale can make a large pack look like the better deal for a week or two; check the unit price again once the promotion ends, since the underlying comparison may flip back.
4. Build a basket for your actual weekly shop, rather than checking one item at a time, if you want a fuller picture of where your usual list works out cheapest.
5. Report a mismatch. If a price you see in a shop does not match what the platform shows, the Ministry's own consumer protection line, 800 1222, is there for exactly this.

What this guide does not do

It does not claim one supermarket is cheapest overall. Prices on the platform change daily and vary by item, so a retailer that is cheapest for rice this week may not be cheapest for eggs. The platform, checked at the time you actually shop, is the most useful source for that current comparison.

General consumer information only, not legal advice. Rules and regulations can change, so check the latest official guidance for your circumstances.