People ask me what grocery stores in Portugal are like, and the short answer for anyone coming from the US is: smaller, cheaper, and there are a lot more of them.
Smaller isn’t a high bar—American supermarkets are enormous. There’s no Walmart-style store here, and even the hypermarkets, the big out-of-town ones, would look modest parked next to a Supercenter. Your fridge and kitchen cabinets will be smaller too (unless you buy an American-size fridge), so your habits change. The giant monthly Costco run turns into two or three smaller trips a week.
Americans will pay less on a basket of groceries, particularly if they’re coming from states like California or Hawaii. Those coming from the UK may find the cost of groceries similar and potentially slightly more expensive.
What you get instead of size is density. I’ve driven across the US and gone hours without passing a supermarket. That doesn’t happen here. A small town in the middle of the Alentejo or central Portugal will have one, and often two or three.
At a glance
Grocery stores in Portugal
✔ Close to 20% cheaper than the US
✔ A store in almost every small town
✔ Loyalty apps matter more than the chain
✖ No Walmart, Costco or Whole Foods
✖ A thin international range
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My own routine
Most of my shopping goes to Lidl, mainly because I have the best luck there with fruit and vegetables. I use Continente and Pingo Doce as well, and I head to Auchan or Intermarché when I want more variety than either of them carries. And I go to the market when I can, because the markets here really are good.
Though I’d make one prediction about that last part. Almost everyone plans to shop at the markets before they move. Almost nobody keeps it up. Convenience wins, and within a few months you’re stopping at the grocery store on the way home exactly like you did back home.
Where Do You Want to Start?
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The full guide
Every chain, what it’s good for, and which loyalty cards are worth having.
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Just show me American food
Where to find half-and-half, ranch, canned pumpkin and a decent bagel.
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Just show me the islands
What grocery shopping is like on Madeira and the Azores, island by island.
The chains
The Main Grocery Chains in Portugal
Short answer
Prices between the main chains are close enough that where you shop matters less than whether you use the loyalty apps.
But the chains aren’t interchangeable, and Portuguese shoppers will happily drive past three stores to buy one thing at a fourth—plenty of people buy their bacalhau at Pingo Doce and nowhere else.
| Chain | Best for | Loyalty program | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lidl My pick | Quality for the price · bread · fruit and vegetables | Lidl Plus app | — |
| Pingo Doce | City centers · bakery · meat and fish counters | Poupa Mais · “20+20” promotions | ✔ |
| Continente | Sheer presence · hypermarkets · the best loyalty card | Cartão Continente · Galp fuel discounts | ✔ |
| Auchan | Variety · international and specialty products | Clube Auchan app | ✔ |
| Intermarché | The butcher counter | Cartão Poupança · Geração+ for over-60s | ✔ |
| Mercadona | Wide aisles · short lines | None, by design | — |
| Aldi | Lidl’s model, with a few more specialty lines | None | — |
| E.Leclerc | Out-of-town hypermarkets · French imports | — | — |
| Apolónia Algarve only | Upmarket · imports · wine · fish counter | — | — |
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Set up the fuel discounts in your first week
Gas costs far more here than in the US, and several of the loyalty programs knock money off it—Continente through Galp, Pingo Doce through its “20+20” promotions. If you’re driving at all, this is where the loyalty cards stop being a rounding error and start being real money.
A closer look
What Each Chain Is Actually Like
Lidl
Best quality for the price, best bread, and the store where I consistently have the most luck with fruit and vegetables. The store-brand organic range is often cheaper than comparable products anywhere else.
If you’ve only met Lidl in the US, it’s the same idea but a much bigger part of daily life here. The limited range is the trade-off—you’ll probably never do all your shopping in one place. The other trade-off is the checkout. Lidl pushes you toward self-checkout and often runs a single staffed register, so getting out can take longer than the speed of the scanning suggests.
Loyalty: the Lidl Plus app, with rotating coupons. Worth having.
Online shopping: no.
My pick
Where I do most of my grocery shopping
✔ Best quality for the price
✔ Best bread
✔ Most reliable fruit and vegetables
✔ Cheap store-brand organic range
✖ Limited range
✖ Often one staffed register
Pingo Doce
The one you’ll find in city centers more reliably than anything else, which makes it the default for a lot of people. Good bakery, well-regarded meat and fish counters, decent store brand. Many larger stores also have a cafeteria, which is a very affordable place to eat a hot lunch.
Some people swear by it; others find the produce inconsistent and the layouts cramped.
Loyalty: Poupa Mais. The periodic “20+20” promotions—spend €100, get €20 to spend in-store plus €20 in fuel vouchers—are the best-loved offer in Portuguese grocery shopping.
Online shopping: yes, through mercadao.pt.
Continente
The biggest chain in the country—the Kroger of Portugal in terms of sheer presence. The large stores are full hypermarkets, with electronics, housewares, books and toys alongside the food. The smaller Continente Bom Dia stores are neighborhood-sized.
It also tends to be the most expensive of the mainstream chains for everyday staples, which the loyalty card is designed to make you forget.
Loyalty: the Cartão Continente is the best program in the country. Points convert to money off, you get personalized coupons, and it links to fuel discounts at Galp. Plenty of people load credit onto the card and pay with it, which also sends receipts to their email.
Online shopping: yes, delivering across mainland Portugal—genuinely useful when you’re setting up a new home and don’t want to rent a van.
Auchan
Where I go when I want something I can’t get elsewhere.
More variety than the others, particularly international and specialty products, and the big out-of-town stores are the closest thing here to the scale an American is used to. A bit more expensive as a result. Older locals still call it Jumbo, which was its name until the French parent company rebranded it.
Auchan bought Minipreço and has been folding those stores into its own brands, so if the Minipreço near you has turned into a My Auchan or an Auchan Supermercado, that’s why.
Loyalty: Clube Auchan, through the app. You get a weekly coupon worth 10% back on Auchan-brand products, and the app’s Scan Expresso feature lets you scan as you go and skip the line.
Online shopping: yes, mainland only.
Intermarché
French-owned, widespread on the mainland, and worth the trip for the butcher counter—a lot of people go specifically for the meat. Like Auchan, it has better variety and slightly higher prices.
Some stores have gas stations, and a few have parking for RVs, which is a very European thing to find attached to a grocery store.
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Over 60? Sign up for Geração+
Intermarché’s free Cartão Poupança builds up savings you can spend from the next day. Add the Geração+ program and on the 10th of every month you get 10% back on a shop of €50 or more.
Online shopping: yes, at intermarche.pt.
Mercadona
I was disappointed, and I say that as someone who liked it in Spain. The Portuguese stores don’t have the range the Spanish ones do. It’s fine, and it stocks some things the other chains don’t, but it isn’t the event that Spanish Mercadona is. Worth a look if one opens near you; not worth planning around.
What it does well is the shopping experience: wide aisles, enough checkouts open that you don’t wait, and smaller carts for smaller trips. The layout, meanwhile, is famously counterintuitive—rice in one corner, pasta somewhere else entirely, and regulars who still can’t find either.
Almost everything is store brand, which some people love and others find limiting. It started in the north and has been expanding fast, into Lisbon, south of the river and, in September 2026, Beja.
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Arriving in the Algarve this fall
Mercadona’s first Algarve store opens in Portimão on October 15, 2026, at the Nova Vila Retail Park, with Faro expected about a month later.
Loyalty: none, by design—flat pricing instead of a coupon game.
Online shopping: not in Portugal yet.
Aldi
Nearly the same model as Lidl, and the rivalry between the two is fiercer than the differences justify. Aldi tends to carry slightly more specialty and international lines. Like Lidl, expect one register open and a push toward self-checkout, though newer stores handle this better than older ones.
Loyalty: none.
Online shopping: no.
E.Leclerc
French hypermarkets, in Portugal since 1995 but this is quite a small chain. Almost always on the outskirts, so you’ll need a car. Good variety, competitive prices, a strong French import section, and locations that pile on gas stations, car washes and laundromats. If there’s one near you, it’s worth knowing about; if there isn’t, you’re not missing much you can’t get at Auchan.
Apolónia (Algarve Only)
A family-run Algarve chain with three stores—Almancil, Galé near Albufeira, and Lagoa—and the closest thing in Portugal to a genuinely upmarket grocery store.
It’s more expensive than the mainstream chains and doesn’t pretend otherwise. What you’re paying for is imported products and a better class of everything: a wider and much more international selection of alcohol, imported vegan products you won’t see elsewhere, a serious fish counter, and a wine section people drive to. They’ll also pack your bags for you, which after six months of racing a Lidl conveyor belt feels close to a spa treatment.
Worth knowing about if you’re in the central Algarve, particularly for the things you can’t get anywhere else. Not somewhere most people do the full weekly shop.
The big names
Is There a Walmart, Costco or Whole Foods in Portugal?
Short answer
No, no and no. Nor Target or Trader Joe’s.
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Costco
There’s one in Seville, which can make sense from the eastern Algarve.
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Whole Foods
EU food rules close some of the gap. Buying organic for everything is still hard.
Walmart
The closest thing is a large Continente, Auchan or E.Leclerc, which carry housewares and electronics alongside the food. None of them approach a Supercenter for scale or range. Portugal generally keeps its shopping in separate boxes: you go to Worten for electronics, Casa for housewares, and Leroy Merlin for home improvement. More on that in buying furniture in Portugal.
For anything you can’t find in a store, most people here use amazon.es or amazon.de, both of which deliver to Portugal—see using Amazon in Portugal.
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Don’t order from a US retailer and have it shipped
Import duty and taxes on arrival will wipe out any saving. Shop inside the EU.
Costco
There’s no Costco in Portugal, but there is one in Seville. If you’re in the eastern Algarve or the southern Alentejo, a stock-up run across the border can make sense, and Spanish prices are often lower on top of it. Costco Spain also carries things that are genuinely hard to find here: beef jerky, canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce. From anywhere farther north, the membership plus the gas plus the day isn’t worth it.
The domestic equivalent is Makro or Recheio, both cash-and-carry chains aimed at businesses rather than the public. If you’re self-employed here with a NIF and a registered business activity, it’s worth asking about a customer card. The fruit, vegetables and milk in particular are cheaper than retail.
Whole Foods
People coming from the US—California in particular—ask about this a lot. You’ll feel less need for one than you might expect. EU food rules are stricter than US ones in several places that matter to Whole Foods shoppers: hormone-treated beef can’t be sold here, chicken isn’t chlorine-washed, and a number of additives still used in the US are banned.
But if you want to buy organic for everything, that’s genuinely tricky, because there’s no single large store where you can do a whole week’s organic shopping. The main chains—Continente, Pingo Doce and so on—carry a very limited organic range. Lidl’s store-brand organic line is often the cheapest option. Celeiro is the nearest thing to a health-food chain, but its fruit and vegetable selection is small.
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If organic matters, factor it into where you live
Make it part of deciding where to live: look for small organic grocers and weekly organic markets in the area before you sign a lease.
The islands
Grocery Shopping on Madeira and the Azores
Everything above is about mainland Portugal. If you’re looking at Madeira or the Azores, the answer changes, and it changes a lot depending on which island.
Short answer
Madeira is fine. In the Azores, the size of the island is the whole story.
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Madeira
There are reasonably sized Continente and Pingo Doce stores. You won’t have the choice you’d get on the mainland, but you won’t feel stranded either.
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São Miguel and Terceira
São Miguel has a large Continente, and Pingo Doce has opened stores across the island since 2022. Terceira also has decent-sized stores, and got its first Pingo Doce in September 2026. For mid-Atlantic islands, both are better supplied than you’d expect, even if the variety doesn’t match the mainland.
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The smaller islands
It’s the smaller islands where you notice. On Santa Maria the stores are small, with a much thinner selection and higher prices. Corvo, with a few hundred residents, is another thing entirely.
As a rough rule, grocery costs are lower on the bigger Azorean islands and climb as the islands get smaller.
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Go and look at the grocery store before you commit
If you’re seriously considering one of the smaller islands, don’t treat it as an afterthought.
Hard-to-find food
What You Won’t Find, and Where to Get It
The international range in a standard Portuguese store is thin. You’ll find something—a Mexican shelf, an Asian shelf—but the quality and choice are basic. I buy some of it at the big Continente and Auchan stores when I’m not picky, and go elsewhere when I am.
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For spices, go to an Indian-owned store
There are far more of them in Portugal than there used to be, and they’re where I buy spices now. The focus is Indian and Pakistani, but the selection is usually good and the quality is noticeably better than anything on a supermarket shelf.
American Products
The things Americans reliably miss, and what to do about each. (If you’re still packing, what to bring when you move covers what’s worth putting in the suitcase.)
| What you’ll miss | What to do about it |
|---|---|
| Drip coffee | Perfectly possible at home if you bring or buy a machine. What doesn’t exist is the culture around it—coffee here is espresso, and it’s a sitting-down business. You can ask for it to take away, but it won’t taste like home. See ordering coffee in Portugal. |
| Half-and-half | Not sold premixed, and asking for it by name gets you nowhere. Mix milk and natas yourself, or use the small coffee creamers. |
| Coffee creamer | Not in cafés, but Coffee Mate turns up at Flavers and Glood. |
| Sour cream nata ácida | Sometimes at Auchan, Aldi, and El Corte Inglés in Lisbon. Most people give up and use crème fraîche. |
| Buttermilk leitelho | El Corte Inglés, Celeiro, sometimes Aldi. |
| Peanut butter | Available everywhere, but in smaller jars and more expensive than you’re used to. |
| Ranch dressing | Hard to find in Portuguese stores—Europe runs on mayonnaise instead. The Overseas stores in the Algarve carry it. |
| Mexican ingredients | Beyond Old El Paso kits, you’re ordering from Casa México, Martha Tomé, or The Chilli Experience. |
| Canned pumpkin, root beer, pumpkin spice, boxed mac and cheese, beef jerky, Frank’s hot sauce | Glood and Flavers cover most of this between them. |
| Bagels | Continente and Pingo Doce sell Bimbo bagels, and they’re not good. If you live in a large city like Lisbon or Porto, there are specialist bakeries that you can get them from instead. |
Glood has stores in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra and is the most useful single stop for American products. Liberty Store covers Lisbon and several of the Azores. My American Market, based in France, ships across Europe.
And one thing no store can fix: diners. You can get a coffee at 11 p.m.; you can’t get pancakes with it.
British, Brazilian, Asian and Everything Else
The British stores are worth knowing about even if you’re not British. They’re the best-stocked foreign grocery stores in the country, and they carry more than you’d expect—not just canned goods and tea, but fresh produce too, including things like rhubarb that simply don’t appear in a Portuguese store. Prices have climbed over the past few years along with everything else, so they’re no longer the bargain they once were, but they’re still the answer for a lot of hard-to-find items.
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British
Overseas has several Algarve locations, including Albufeira Retail Park near Guia and Portimão, with its own butcher doing British cuts. The Food Co. in Almancil stocks 7,500-odd products, including Tesco’s store brand. GB Superstore in Cascais serves the Lisbon side. Online, British Cornershop carries over 12,000 products.
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Brazilian
Brazilians are the largest foreign community here, so this is well served. Mercado Brasil Tropical has stores in Lisbon, Odivelas, Cascais, Vila Franca de Xira, Porto and Almada, and Sabor Brasil delivers nationwide.
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Asian
Most big cities have at least one Asian grocer; in Lisbon there are several around Martim Moniz. Ayur stocks Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Middle Eastern products.
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El Corte Inglés
The Lisbon store has one of the widest international food halls in the country. It’s also the most expensive way to buy any of it.
Day to day
What to Expect Once You’re Shopping Here
You’re in Portugal, so expect Portuguese products. Portuguese people love Portuguese things, and there’s much less of a culture of buying international brands than there is in the US. A few other things take getting used to.
The Counters Are More Adventurous
You’ll find a fish counter in most decent-sized stores, which is less common in the US. Be aware that it gives off a strong smell, particularly around the bacalhau.
The meat counter is more adventurous too. You’ll find chicken feet, a pig’s head, and—depending on which part of the country you’re in—an entire frozen pig. This is just part of Portuguese food culture, but it’s worth knowing about if you’re not used to it.
Checkout Culture Is Different
You’ll notice people chatting at the checkout, but generally only when the cashier already knows them, and more with older shoppers than younger ones. In the US a cashier will chat with anyone—how’s your day, any plans for the weekend. That isn’t really the case here. You have to build the relationship first.
It’s also slow. Not US slow, where the holdup is that everyone ahead of you is buying a month’s food at once, but slow in its own way—things simply move at a gentler pace. I use self-checkout wherever it’s offered, especially for a handful of items, and it saves more time here than it would back home.
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Have your bags open before the first item lands
You bag your own groceries everywhere in Portugal, and at Lidl and Aldi you bag them fast. The cashiers there are told to put products through as quickly as possible.
You’ll Be Asked for Your NIF, Constantly
Nobody asks for your Social Security number at a US checkout, so being asked for your NIF number at every register takes some getting used to. You do get used to it. Memorize the number in Portuguese and hand it over.
It’s worth doing for two reasons. Once you’re tax resident, grocery receipts count toward the general household expenses deduction on your Portuguese tax return. And every receipt issued under your NIF is another record showing you actually live here, spending money week after week—useful if you’re ever asked to prove it at your AIMA renewal.
Don’t have a NIF yet?
You’ll be asked for it at every checkout, and you’ll need it for renting, utilities and a bank account too.
Thinking about Moving to Portugal?