Built on the official USDA Food Plans for May 2026 — real published figures by age and sex, not a made-up per-person average.
USDA publishes four levels, from Thrifty (the basis for maximum SNAP benefits) to Liberal. Low-cost is a realistic middle for most households cooking at home.
Estimated monthly grocery budget
$650
Based on the USDA Food Plans for May 2026, U.S. average. Source. Alaska and Hawaii are materially higher and aren't modelled here.
A target is one thing; staying under it across four shopping trips is another. Alfie tracks groceries against your budget as you go — scan the receipt and it reads the total on your device — so you know where you stand before the last week of the month, not after.
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Most grocery budget calculators use a single invented per-person figure. This one uses the USDA Food Plans, which the USDA publishes monthly as the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet prepared at home, broken down by age and sex, at four spending levels. Figures here are for May 2026, U.S. average.Source.
The calculation follows USDA's prescribed presentation: sum each individual's cost first, then apply the uniform household-size adjustment once. Their published costs assume a four-person household, so smaller households pay more per person — 20% more for one person, 10% for two — because food does not scale down neatly. A uniform factor distributes over addition, so applying the same factor to every person before summing is mathematically equivalent; summing first makes the audit trail clear and avoids intermediate rounding.
In three brackets — children aged 4–5, males 14–19 and males 20–50 — the Low-cost plan comes out cheaper than Thrifty. That looks like a bug and isn't. Thrifty was re-evaluated in 2021 with newer data, while the other three plans still rest on 2001–02 data with inflation applied on top. We're showing USDA's figures as published rather than quietly smoothing them.
The Food Plans are food at home. Restaurants, takeaway and coffee out are not included, and for many households they are a larger line than groceries. Household supplies, cleaning products, pet food and toiletries are also excluded, even though they usually land in the same shopping trip.
