StapleWatch: Grocery Prices

What does a dozen eggs actually cost this month? Is milk up or down? StapleWatch answers that in one glance, using official U.S. government price data. Track the everyday things you buy — eggs, milk, ground beef, chicken, bacon, bread, coffee, bananas, gasoline, electricity and more — and see the current average price, how much it moved, and where it has been heading. WHAT YOU GET • 38 staples across dairy, meat, produce, pantry, drinks, and energy • Current U.S. average price with the change vs. last month and last year • Clean, fast charts built for one-handed checking • "My basket": the combined cost of everything you track, and how it moved • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets with a 12-month sparkline • System, light, or dark appearance, plus dark and tinted app icons • On sale this week: what supermarkets advertised for eggs, milk, butter, beef, chicken, pork, produce and more, from USDA Market News, labeled as a sale price next to the BLS average • A monthly heads-up when new data is published • Works offline — the latest prices are stored on your phone • No account, no sign-up STAPLEWATCH PRO (one-time purchase, no subscription) • Removes all ads • Track unlimited items • Regional prices: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West, side by side • Pick your state: electricity and natural gas for all 50 states and DC, gasoline for 9 states; groceries show your region, labeled • Pick your metro: BLS gasoline averages for 23 metro areas (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Miami…) • Compare states: rank states by electricity, natural gas, and gasoline prices, and metros by gasoline • Sale prices for your USDA region (free shows the national figure) • Your metro's grocery trend: the GroceryChop Price Index, month over month, next to the U.S. • Why this price: fuel taxes, grocery sales tax, the laws behind them (who passed them and when) and what really drives each price, with sources • Up to 20 years of history • Basket trend: your basket total over time, up to 20 years • Multi-item widget and a My Basket widget • Per-item alerts ("Eggs up 8% this month") • Export any series to CSV ABOUT THE DATA U.S. and regional prices come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics "Average Price Data" series, published monthly alongside the Consumer Price Index: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/average-prices.htm These are average prices paid by urban consumers, not the price at your local store; when BLS discontinues a regional series, the app says so instead of showing stale numbers. BLS does not publish prices by state. State energy prices come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov): residential electricity and natural gas for all 50 states and DC, and regular gasoline for 9 states, usually a month or two behind BLS. With a state picked, groceries show your region's average, labeled. Metro gasoline prices are BLS Average Price data for 23 metro areas; BLS publishes no other metro prices, so everything else follows your state. Sale prices come from supermarket weekly ads collected by USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Market News (https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov), by USDA region and nationally. They are advertised prices, not the regular shelf price or what shoppers pay on average; only staples with a genuine USDA match show them. The metro grocery trend is the GroceryChop Price Index (https://grocerychop.com/price-index, CC BY 4.0), a monthly index of real shelf prices by metro that began in April 2026; it is independent of BLS, and year-over-year comparisons arrive in spring 2027. StapleWatch is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Energy Information Administration, the Department of Agriculture, GroceryChop, or any government agency. PRIVACY Your tracked items and settings stay on your device. The free version shows ads from Google AdMob; you choose whether to allow tracking. Pro removes ads entirely.