12 Key Distinctions Between Lidl and Aldi

Aldi and Lidl are two German-owned grocery chains, and while the similar names might have you thinking that they’re related, they’re not. In fact, while they do have some similarities — both have sections with those limited-time fun finds, for example — they have some distinct differences that affect how you shop at each and what you’ll encounter in those locations.

Both Aldi and Lidl have made inroads into the U.S. grocery scene over the past several years. The two companies are popular and offer a mix of products, and each company plans to expand and increase its share of the shopping market. But, the two have different approaches toward issues like packaging, delivery, and even what specialized departments they want to offer to customers. If you’re lucky enough to live in a region that has both chains, you’d do well to check them both out if you haven’t already. Here’s a look at the differences you’ll encounter when you make a trip to Aldi and shop at Lidl.

One of the first differences you’ll notice if you go to Lidl instead of Aldi is that you won’t need a quarter to get a shopping cart. Aldi uses the quarter system, in which customers deposit the coin and only get it back when they return the carts to the storage area. Doing so helps reduce the need for staff to walk all over parking lots to try to round up all the carts. While Aldi’s reasoning makes sense, it’s more convenient to grab a cart without having to unlock it with a quarter.

Lidl in the U.S. doesn’t require a quarter, but locations outside the U.S. sometimes do. (For example, U.K. Lidl locations require coins to unlock the carts.) However, U.S. shoppers may need to keep their eyes open for new cart policies at some Lidl locations. In 2024, a shopper at one Washington D.C. location claimed online that a security guard and a manager initially prevented them from taking their cart over to their car, claiming there was a new store policy.

Two major differences between Lidl and Aldi are that Aldi has been in the U.S. for much longer than Lidl, and Aldi has expanded its reach much faster and more widely than Lidl. Aldi, which first opened a U.S. location in 1976, has over 2,500 locations in the U.S. as of April 2025, and in 2024, the company announced plans to open 800 more stores within half a decade. Its aggressive expansion plans encountered a hiccup when it bought the grocery chains Winn-Dixie and Harveys with plans to convert them to Aldi locations; Aldi ended up selling many of the locations back to an investment group led by the CEO of Southeastern Grocers, which was Winn-Dixie’s former owner. However, Aldi is still going ahead with much of its plans. 

Lidl’s expansion strategy seems incredibly cautious in comparison. While the company has over 12,000 locations overall, only about 170 of those are in the U.S. as of April 2025. The company opened its first U.S. location in 2015. Some of the expansion has been through acquisition, such as when Lidl acquired the Best Market chain, giving Lidl several new locations in New York and New Jersey. But, the chain’s expansion in general has been slow, and not just in the U.S. The chain’s parent company in Europe has had to deal with high interest costs, which may have resulted in a cautious approach to new stores.

Lidl locations have full in-house bakeries, and the bakeries are known for inexpensive yet delicious pastries. The chain’s croissants are especially loved, with shoppers claiming that the croissants are perfectly light and flaky and very easy to freeze for later. Lidl has added new bakery items over the past couple of years, too, including several new flavors of donuts, bagels, and muffins. Any complaints are centered more around how customers use — or don’t use — tongs properly when picking up items, instead using their hands to pick up and then throw back pastries.

Although Aldi locations tend not to have in-store bakeries, in 2018, Aldi announced that some locations in Illinois, Maryland, and Wisconsin would get them. There were online reports soon after that other locations in states like Virginia opened up with in-store bakeries, too. However, there hasn’t been much news since then about more locations possibly getting bakeries. In fact, it’s not even clear how many of those test locations still have in-store bakeries now, as Aldi’s store location pages don’t list the bakery as an available service at any of them. 

Aldi and Lidl aim to provide customers with inexpensive, budget-friendly items, but how much cheaper is one compared to the other? Aldi manages to edge out Lidl in surveys that look at regional grocery stores and weekly or monthly shopping trips. Both are much cheaper than many other grocery companies in the U.S., so you’re not going to obliterate your budget by shopping at Lidl. But you will likely spend a bit more there than you would at Aldi.

Surveys of prices vary widely because they depend on the specific items the testers decide to focus on. They also vary because the timeframe or size of the shopping list can change, with some surveys looking at a typical weekly grocery run and others looking at a specific list of foods that may be random and nowhere near what someone would actually buy per week or month. But, in general, Aldi was the cheaper grocery store compared to Lidl by about $5-11, depending on the specific items in the survey list. However, it’s also worth noting that Consumer’s Checkbook’s survey claimed Lidl tended to have more of the items that were on the sample list and that Aldi’s quality was often seen as lower than that of Lidl.

Both Aldi and Lidl focus on private-label items, otherwise known as store brands. Aldi carries slightly more private-label products than Lidl, with Lidl having 80% of its stock private label and Aldi having 90% of its stock private label. The intense focus on store brands at two companies that want to provide lower-cost items isn’t a surprise. Private labels are easier to get onto shelves as there’s no need to market the items to different companies to get the products onto shelves; the products already have a shelf ready and waiting. There are no markups or extra fees for store brands like there are for national brand-name products. Exclusive store brands save the company money, and the company can pass the savings to customers in the form of lower prices, helping buyers not overspend.

Aldi has made a change to its choice of items to stock, however. The company has increased the number of national brands it carries because customers wanted to do more shopping at Aldi but couldn’t because the products they wanted weren’t available there. Rather than continually have customers leave because they couldn’t find a brand name that they wanted, Aldi is shifting some shelf space to include those products instead.

In 2022, Lidl began a pilot program that placed garden centers at some locations, starting with one in New York on Long Island. The program then expanded to New York state and later to additional states. In March 2024, Lidl announced that the garden centers would be added to nearly half of the company’s U.S. locations. These weren’t just little plant sections by the entrances to the markets but full outdoor nurseries that gardeners could go to for supplies. You know the garden centers attached to home improvement stores? That type of gardening center. The company partnered with local growers to offer plants in addition to selling gardening accessories.

In contrast, Aldi has some plants and gardening supplies within its stores — some of which warrant friendly warnings online to grab them before they’re gone —but no full outdoor garden center akin to what you’d find at hardware/home improvement stores. There are some anecdotes online about customers actually buying most of their gardening tools from Aldi. However, an Aldi Finds aisle with stacks of planters is still vastly different from a full outdoor nursery.

The size of a store obviously affects how many products it can sell. Smaller stores that try to stuff too many products in limited spaces end up looking messy or stocking only a small number of each item; that leads to customer frustration as items may be out of stock frequently or may be hard to find on crowded shelves. Larger stores with many, many products can also contribute to consumer decision fatigue and can be hard to maneuver in, as the number of aisles may become a source of overwhelm.

Lidl currently concentrates on stores that are about 25,000 square feet precisely to avoid making shopping more difficult and instead make the entire process more efficient. Some options in a smaller space are generally easier for people to handle than many options in a cavernous space. But Aldi takes this a step further and focuses on store spaces that are about 18,000 square feet (for comparison, the average Trader Joe’s is under 15,000 square feet), with wide aisles that let people move about easily.

In terms of which store has a bigger fan base in the U.S., this should come as no surprise: Aldi has a larger following. On one hand, it makes perfect sense because Aldi has been in the U.S. since the 1970s, while Lidl didn’t arrive until the 2010s. Aldi also has a nationwide presence, while Lidl has locations in only a few states. Those facts alone would make it more likely that Aldi would have a much larger following. And the chain’s push to expand rapidly over the next few years will only increase its reach and influence, especially as inflation affects more shoppers who may look for new markets with lower prices.

In fact, Lidl has struggled to connect with shoppers since its U.S. debut. In 2024, the company embarked on a mission to revamp its business, and part of that involved looking at the differences between its American and European customers. Details like the larger freezer sizes in American homes can affect what Lidl sells in the U.S., for example, and the company has also looked at its lack of name recognition in regions that it serves. The aforementioned garden centers are also part of Lidl’s push to gain more business.

Both Aldi and Lidl aim to provide lower prices and efficient service. However, the two have attracted slightly different clientele over the years. Aldi has been the budget-shop leader, attracting more people who are lower-income, according to data from Placer Labs, while Lidl has attracted wealthier customers who often have larger families.

Some of this has to do with location. Lidl tends to place its stores in locations with a higher median household income, and Aldi tends to place its stores in locations that have a lower median household income. However, the difference in demographics also has to do with who’s choosing to show up at these markets. Placer Labs took a look at Aldi and Lidl’s performance in 2023 and found that, while the potential market (group of customers who could potentially shop at the stores) for the two showed Aldi in lower-income zones and Lidl in higher income zones, the captured market (composed of those who actually visited) showed an even greater divide. The average household income in Aldi’s captured market was even lower than the potential market’s, and the median income in Lidl’s captured market exceeded that of the potential market.

Extending the life span of fresh produce can be difficult, even with the best storage strategies, so finding a store that has produce that lasts for a relatively long time can be a blessing. Lidl seems to be one of those stores, and many people have commented online about choosing Lidl over Aldi for produce and a few other items. Customers shared online that Lidl’s produce lasts longer and that the company has a bigger selection of produce.

Another advantage patrons have noticed at Lidl is that the produce is loose; you choose the number of items you need and don’t end up with all this extra plastic. Aldi often prepackages some of its produce, and customers have to buy a certain amount, whether they need all of it or not. They can’t buy more or less than what’s in the package. There is an advantage to doing it this way: A prepackaged bunch of apples will have one price tag that the cashier can scan quickly. That is a lot faster than weighing a bag of produce. However, it does mean that if you shop at Aldi, you’ll have to deal with more plastic than you may have wanted to.

Both Aldi and Lidl offer home delivery, but the two markets use different services. That means you won’t be able to order items from both markets using the same apps and will need to sign up with different companies. Aldi works with Instacart and DoorDash, while Lidl uses Shipt. This also means that those deliveries can have substantially different costs and requirements, and that’s something you need to take into account when adding up the total of your order.

Shipt requires a monthly or yearly membership fee in order to use the service. There is usually a free trial, so you can try out Shipt without signing up for a membership for a short time. Delivery and other fees vary depending on membership status, but once that free trial is over and you’ve signed up for a membership, the amount of the delivery fee is based on the dollar value of your order.

Instacart and DoorDash also have membership subscriptions, but these are optional; you can use both services without paying a recurring fee. You will pay a delivery fee when using these two services without a membership; the DoorDash membership offers $0 delivery fees as perks, whereas Instacart’s membership only grants free delivery if the order is at least $10.

Trader Joe’s started as a small chain of Los Angeles-area markets owned by namesake Joe Coulombe. A fun fact, and another difference between Aldi and Lidl, is that Trader Joe’s soon became a part of the Aldi family when it was sold to Theo Albrecht in 1979, who was one of the brothers who started the markets that became Aldi in Europe.

After a family feud back in 1961, what was then Aldi split into separate companies that controlled market locations in different regions. Theo ran Aldi Nord (nord means north), and his brother, Karl, ran Aldi Sud (sud means south). Other than the common beginning and name, Aldi Nord and Sud are no longer linked.

For whatever reason, Aldi Nord decided to sell some of its products under the Trader Joe’s name in Europe. True, these products have nothing to do with the actual Trader Joe’s in the U.S., and U.S. Aldi locations are owned by Aldi Sud, not Nord. But if you’re in the U.S. and are new to shopping at Aldi and Lidl, the link between Trader Joe’s and Aldi in general — and not Lidl — could be another way to keep the two companies separate in your head.