Official USDA food plans estimate what a nutritious month of home cooking costs at four spending levels. Here is what each tier means for a family of four, and why real bills vary so widely.
Food is the least predictable line in a family budget. Rent is fixed and insurance arrives as a quote, but groceries swing week to week with prices, appetites and how tired everyone is by dinnertime. The federal government publishes a benchmark that removes some of the guesswork: four food plans, updated monthly, that estimate what a nutritious diet cooked entirely at home costs at four spending levels. Here is what they say for a family of four, what pushes one household to the top of the range while another sits near the bottom, and how to put the numbers to use.
Where the Official Numbers Come From
USDA has been answering this question since 1894, when it published its first food plan, a list of reasonably priced foods that would meet the nutritional needs of an average American man doing moderate physical work. The plans in use today are calculated by USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. There are four: the Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal Food Plans. Each specifies the types and quantities of commonly consumed foods a household could buy and prepare at home for a nutritious diet people would actually want to eat, at a particular cost level. Even the cheapest plan is not a bare-minimum diet built from the same few cheap ingredients.
The Thrifty Food Plan does double duty. It sets the basis for maximum benefits in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and a 2018 Farm Bill required that its basket of foods be updated every five years using current food prices, eating patterns, food composition and dietary guidance.
The Four USDA Food Plans at a Glance
USDA publishes updated costs every month. For September 2026, in the report issued in October 2026, the reference family of four, meaning two adults aged 19 to 50 and two children ages 6 to 11, lands at these figures:
| Plan | Weekly cost | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Thrifty | $236 | $1,024 |
| Low-Cost | $260 | $1,127 |
| Moderate-Cost | $321 | $1,389 |
| Liberal | $388 | $1,682 |
These are national averages for the contiguous United States, and every one of them assumes that all meals and snacks are prepared at home. Restaurant meals, takeout and delivery are not part of any plan, which is the single biggest reason a family’s actual food spending can exceed the benchmark without anything going wrong.
Money saver: Before comparing your own spending to these benchmarks, split your food spending in two: groceries bought for home, and everything eaten out. The USDA plans cover only the first category.
What Each Plan Looks Like on a Receipt
The plans describe a nutritious diet at four levels of flexibility, and the receipt looks different at each one.
The Thrifty plan, at $236 a week for this family, assumes careful planning, cooking almost everything from scratch, store brands and essentially no waste. The Low-Cost plan adds a modest amount of room above that. The Moderate-Cost plan, at $321 a week, is closest to what a typical household eating primarily at home spends when it is not being extremely frugal. The Liberal plan, $388 a week, allows wider variety, more convenience foods and higher-quality cuts of meat.
The spread between the cheapest and most expensive plan for the same family is about $658 a month, or nearly $7,900 a year. That gap is the clearest illustration of how much food choices, not just food prices, shape a grocery bill.
Why the Same Family Can Spend Very Different Amounts
Where you live moves the numbers first. The published figures are national averages, and food tends to cost 10 to 20 percent more in the Northeast and on the West Coast than in the Midwest and South. Alaska and Hawaii carry separate, higher cost adjustments that do not appear in these figures.
Household size matters through economies of scale. USDA adjusts single-person households up by about 20 percent per person and two-person households up by about 10 percent, because bulk buying and shared ingredients are less efficient at smaller sizes. A person living alone spends roughly 20 percent more per capita than someone in a four-person household.
Prices also vary widely across stores and regions. USDA’s own price research is built from retail scanner data covering roughly 50,000 to 60,000 stores a year, including grocery stores, supercenters, club stores, drug stores and convenience stores, and it tracks 90 food categories across 15 geographic areas. That range of coverage exists because the same item can carry very different price tags in different places.
Age Matters: Costs by Family Member
The reference family is built from adults aged 19 to 50 and two children, one aged 6 to 8 and one aged 9 to 11. Households with different ages cannot use the headline numbers directly, but USDA publishes a separate figure for every age and sex group in its monthly reports.
The differences are real. On the Thrifty plan, a single adult man runs about $71 a week and a single adult woman about $57, with the man’s figure about 26 percent higher. Two adults on that plan are budgeted at about $630 a month, while the four-person family is set at $1,024, so the two children together account for roughly $394. Adding up the age groups that match your own household gives a far better estimate than borrowing the family-of-four average.
Dining Out and Where It Fits in the Total
The USDA plans measure one thing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures what households actually spend, and its Consumer Expenditure Surveys for 2024 put households of four at about $725 a month on groceries plus about $487 a month on food away from home. Together that is close to double the grocery-only figure, and it shows how quickly restaurant spending can rival the food budget itself.
The same survey data gives context on scale. Groceries for those four-person households averaged about 5.4 percent of their income before taxes, which averaged $161,716, and 8.0 percent of their total spending. Across all household sizes, average grocery spending came to $519 a month, or $6,224 a year, in 2024.
Waste is part of the total too. The EPA estimated that Americans throw away $728 per person per year in food bought and never eaten, a 2025 figure. For a family of four, that works out to roughly $243 a month, more than the entire gap between the Thrifty and Low-Cost plans.
What to Do if Your Grocery Bill Is Far Above the Benchmarks
Start by checking the comparison itself. If takeout and restaurant meals are mixed into the grocery total, the number will look inflated against a home-cooking benchmark, so separate the two categories first. Then check the household match: a family with younger children or a single adult shopping for one faces different official figures than the reference family of four.
If groceries alone still sit well above the matching plan, habits are usually where the difference lives. Planning the week before shopping, choosing dinners that share ingredients, writing one list, checking the pantry first and scheduling a leftover night all cut duplicate purchases. Comparing unit prices rather than package sizes catches the deals that only look like deals, as we explain in unit pricing. A pause before non-list purchases helps as well.
Families of four often ask whether bulk buying lowers the bill. A warehouse club can reduce the cost per unit on staples, but only if the household finishes what it buys; we weigh the trade-offs in Is a Warehouse Club Membership Worth It?.
The benchmarks are a reference point, not a score. If you want to bring a high bill down, planning a week of meals before you shop covers the step that most reliably trims the total, and our guide to grocery shopping on a budget collects the habits that keep the savings going.
Quick wins
- For September 2026, USDA’s four food plans put a reference family of four at $1,024 to $1,682 a month for groceries, with the Thrifty plan at $236 a week.
- All four plans assume every meal and snack is prepared at home; restaurant, takeout and delivery spending is not included.
- In 2024, households of four averaged about $725 a month on groceries plus about $487 a month on food away from home, according to BLS surveys.
- Food tends to cost 10 to 20 percent more in the Northeast and on the West Coast than in the Midwest and South.
- The EPA estimated food bought and never eaten at $728 per person per year, roughly $243 a month for a family of four.
You might be wondering
What does USDA say a family of four should spend on groceries?
For September 2026, the four plans range from $1,024 a month on the Thrifty plan to $1,682 on the Liberal plan for a reference family of two adults and two children, assuming all meals are made at home.
Do the USDA food plans include eating out?
No. The plans cover food prepared at home only, so restaurant meals, takeout and delivery should be tracked separately when you compare your spending.
Is the Thrifty Food Plan connected to SNAP?
Yes. Maximum benefits for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are based on the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, which a 2018 Farm Bill required be updated every five years.
Why does my grocery bill differ from the benchmarks?
Region, the ages of household members and store choices all shift the number. USDA adjusts for household size and publishes separate figures for each age and sex group in its monthly reports.
These tips are general information. Prices, plans and programs vary by provider and location, so check the details with your provider before you switch or sign up.