What Changes After You Upgrade to GroceryBudget Premium

GroceryBudget's free tier is genuinely useful. You can create carts, set budgets, track spending, and see 7 days of insights. Most people start there, and it works.

But after a few weeks of real use, patterns start to emerge. You hit walls you didn't expect. This isn't a feature checklist — it's what actually changes when your grocery tracking gets serious.

Week 1: Everything Works Fine

You download the app, create your first cart, add items, set a budget. You complete your trip and check the Insights tab. There's a spending chart, a category breakdown, your total spent. Price memory saves your prices for next time.

The free tier handles all of this. No limits, no restrictions. This is your trial run and it's the real app.

Week 2: You Want to See Last Week

You open Insights to compare this week's spending to last week. But last week's data is gone — free users see the last 7 days only.

You remember spending more last week. Or was it less? You're not sure. The spending trend chart shows a line that starts today and goes back seven days. Everything before that is a blank.

This is the first wall. You're tracking your spending, but you can't see the bigger picture.

With Premium: Your full spending history is always there. Every cart, every trip, every trend — going back to your first day using the app. The spending trend chart shows weeks and months of data, so you can spot patterns like "I spend more the week before holidays" or "my grocery costs went up 15% since January."

Week 3: The Default Templates Don't Fit

You've been buying roughly the same items for three weeks. You try the default templates, but they don't match your actual shopping habits. You want to create a template with your specific items, your usual quantities, your categories.

You can't. Free users can use the defaults but can't create custom ones. So you duplicate a cart or use "Use Again" from Insights — which works, but you're carrying over items you don't need and missing ones you do.

With Premium: Create unlimited custom templates built around how you actually shop. A weekday essentials template. A monthly stock-up template. A template for when guests are coming over. Edit them as your habits change, duplicate them as starting points for new ones. Your weekly grocery run starts with a tap instead of a rebuild.

Month 2: You're Shopping at Multiple Stores

By now you have a routine. Maybe it's the supermarket for staples and the local market for produce. You've been entering prices at both stores for weeks.

You know eggs are cheaper at one store. You think rice is cheaper at the other. But you're going off memory — you can't actually see the price history side by side.

Free users see their top 3 most-purchased items. That's enough to know what you buy a lot of, but not enough to make real decisions about where to buy it.

With Premium: Price history tracks every price you've entered, across every store, over time. Open any item and see a price trend chart — when it was cheapest, which store consistently has the best price, whether prices are going up or staying flat.

The full most-purchased items list shows everything, not just the top 3. Sort by frequency, by total spent, by store. This is where you find the items eating most of your budget — and where you can cut.

Store comparison puts it all on one screen. Instead of guessing, you know that Store A is better for produce and Store B is better for pantry staples. That knowledge compounds every single week.

The Compound Effect

None of these features matter on day one. On day one, the free tier is perfect.

But grocery budgeting is a long game. You're not trying to save money on one trip — you're trying to spend less over months and years. That requires data you can look back on, patterns you can spot, and workflows you can repeat without thinking.

Premium doesn't add new capabilities. It removes the limits on the ones you're already using:

• Insights history: 7 days → unlimited
• Custom templates: defaults only → create, edit, delete, duplicate
• Most-purchased items: top 3 → full list
• Price history: basic → full trends with store comparison

The free tier tells you what you spent this week. Premium tells you what you spend, where you spend it, how it's changing, and where you're overpaying.

What It Costs

Premium is available as a monthly or yearly plan. Prices vary by region and are shown in the app. If the app helps you avoid even one impulse buy per month, it pays for itself.

It works for guest accounts too — you don't need to register first. When you do create an account, your Premium status and all your data transfer automatically.

Try Free First

There's no pressure to upgrade. Use the free tier for as long as you want. Create carts, track budgets, build up your price memory. When you start wanting to see further back, customize your templates, or compare prices across stores — Premium is there.

[Download GroceryBudget](https://apps.apple.com/app/grocerybudget-shopping-list/id6749287517) and start with your first cart. You'll know when the free tier isn't enough.