Basket Wise is a grocery list and basket comparison web app we built at Hardcode Studios for South African households. You write your shopping list once and see what the whole basket comes to at several familiar retailers. It is live at basket-wise.hardcode-studios.com.

The problem it solves

Grocery prices vary between stores, and they move with specials and promotions. Checking a list item by item across several retailer websites takes longer than most people have, so households tend to shop by habit.

The useful question is simpler than it sounds: where is this whole basket cheapest? Answering it means pulling prices from different sources, matching like with like, and adding it all up. That is the job Basket Wise does.

What we built

The app is organised around four areas: List, Basket, Pantry and My Lists.

  • List. Type items line by line, or use the camera button, into a named list such as a weekly shop. Users can keep more than one list.
  • Basket. The full-basket total for each retailer, side by side. Users can compare Checkers, Pick n Pay, Woolworths and CAB, and the app flags the best single-store option.
  • Per-item prices. A breakdown of the option selected at each retailer, so users can see where the difference comes from.
  • One-basket ranking. The retailers ordered from cheapest to most expensive for that list.

People can start as a guest without signing in. Signing in is optional and is there for saving lists and sharing them with a household, so more than one person can work on the same shop. Totals are shown in rand.

How it is set up

Basket Wise is a responsive, installable progressive web app. It works in the browser on a phone or desktop, and can be added to the home screen like an app.

A few design choices are worth noting for anyone thinking about a similar build:

  • Local first. Lists and preferences are stored in the browser by default, and only sync to our servers when someone uses an account feature such as saving or sharing a list.
  • Honest about the data. Prices come from public or licensed retailer-linked data combined with what the user enters. The app presents totals as estimates, and the terms make clear that shelf prices shift and that the retailers are independent of Basket Wise.
  • Privacy by default. The published privacy policy is written with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in mind, and the app does not rely on invasive advertising trackers.

Why this matters if you are weighing us up

On the surface Basket Wise is a household tool. Underneath, it is a data platform: it collects information from several outside sources, normalises it into a comparable format, and presents it in a way a non-technical person can act on quickly.

That pattern shows up in a lot of businesses:

  • Comparing supplier prices before placing an order.
  • Checking quotes from several vendors against the same specification.
  • Tracking what the same item costs across branches or regions.
  • Turning scattered spreadsheets into one view a manager can trust.

The product also shows a few habits we bring to client work. We keep the first step low-friction (no sign-up needed to try it). We are clear with users about what the numbers mean and where they come from. And we treat privacy and local compliance as part of the build, not a later fix.

Basket Wise is a live, working product rather than a mock-up. That is the point where improvement work starts, and it is how we prefer to work with clients: build something real, put it in front of users, then keep improving it.

Talk to us

If your team spends too much time comparing numbers from different places, get in touch and tell us what you are working with. You can also see Basket Wise on our tools page and in our projects portfolio.