Dirk is cheaper than Albert Heijn and it is not close.
The Consumentenbond priced 131 budget groceries across thirteen chains on 6 May 2026 and found Dirk and Nettorama running 9% below the national average, Vomar 8% below and Hoogvliet 7% below, with Poiesz 24% above and SPAR 18% above.
That is the honest answer to the question everyone actually asks, and it comes with one condition attached: the survey takes the cheapest option on the shelf for every item.
If you buy brands rather than own-label, the gap narrows and the convenience argument starts to win.
The chains you will actually see
Albert Heijn holds about 38% of the Dutch market and it is not close to being displaced.
Jumbo is around 20%, Plus around 8%, Aldi around 6%.
Lidl and Dirk do not release their figures and sit inside a grouped 22% along with Vomar, Nettorama, Boni and Dekamarkt.
In The Hague specifically, of the four cheapest chains in that survey, two have a real presence.
Dirk has branches on the Torenstraat in the centre and at Simon Carmiggelthof.
Hoogvliet, a Zuid-Holland chain, has several including Het Kleine Loo, Forellendaal, Theresiastraat and Oude Kustlijn.
Nettorama and Vomar are thin on the ground here, so the useful version of the Consumentenbond’s finding for a Hague household is: Dirk first, Hoogvliet second.
What each one is for
Albert Heijn is for range, opening hours and not thinking about it.
It has the most stores, the longest hours, the best ready-made food and the only genuinely large stores in the centre.
You pay for that.
The bonuskaart is not optional if you shop there: a large share of the shelf-edge prices are bonuskaart prices, and without one scanned you pay the full price on every one of them.
Jumbo is the closest thing to a direct competitor on range, usually a little cheaper, and its larger stores do a better fresh counter.
Its price guarantee marketing is less meaningful than it sounds.
Lidl and Aldi are German discounters and they work the way discounters work: a short, fixed range, very little choice within each category, and a weekly rotation of non-food that you did not come in for.
Both are genuinely cheaper than Albert Heijn.
Neither is as cheap as Dirk on a budget basket.
Lidl’s bakery section is the one thing people cross town for.
Plus is mid-market and pleasant.
Spar is the most expensive mainstream option in the country at 18% above average, which makes sense once you notice where its stores are: stations, small high streets, places where you are paying for proximity.
Ekoplaza is organic and priced accordingly.
Marqt-style and deli formats sit in the same bracket.
None of them is a weekly shop for most households.
The thing that beats all of them on fruit and vegetables
The Haagse Markt on Herman Costerstraat runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with around 500 stalls, and it is either the largest outdoor market in Europe or close to it depending on who is counting.
For fruit, vegetables, fish, nuts, herbs and cheese it is cheaper than any supermarket in this city, by a margin that makes the tram fare irrelevant.
Go late in the day for the reductions and early for the choice.
Bring cash even though most stalls now take cards, and bring your own bags.
The markets article covers the smaller ones, which are worth knowing because the Haagse Markt is not near everybody.
The international aisle is not the answer
Every Dutch supermarket has a small shelf labelled something like wereldkeuken, and it is a disappointment in every one of them.
The Hague is a city where a third of residents have a background outside the Netherlands, and the actual answer is the specialist shops.
Turkish and Moroccan supermarkets around Transvaal and the Schilderswijk do fresh bread, spices, pulses and meat at prices the big chains cannot touch.
The Asian supermarkets carry the Indonesian, Chinese, Thai and Japanese ingredients that the wereldkeuken shelf only gestures at, and this being The Hague, the Indonesian range is exceptional.
Surinamese and Indian shops cluster in their own streets.
International food shops in The Hague are worth an afternoon of exploring early on, and we have a longer article on where they are.
Practical things nobody tells you
Statiegeld is a deposit on drinks packaging and it is real money.
A can or a small plastic bottle carries 15 cents, a large plastic bottle from a litre upwards carries 25 cents.
You get it back at the machine inside the supermarket, which prints a voucher you hand in at the till.
A household drinking fizzy water accumulates a surprising amount of this.
Many Dutch supermarkets do not take credit cards.
Debit cards and the Dutch bank apps work everywhere; a foreign Visa or Mastercard frequently does not, and some stores have stopped taking cash.
A Dutch bank account with a Maestro or V Pay card solves this and is one of the first things worth doing.
Self-scan is standard and the random check is genuinely random.
Bags are not free and not offered; the tram home with loose shopping is a rite of passage you only perform once.
Opening hours are long by Dutch standards and vary by store.
Sunday opening is normal in The Hague, though usually a later start, and everything closes on the handful of days set out in the public holidays article.
That article is worth reading before your first Koningsdag, when the answer to “is anything open” is different from what you expect.
Delivery
Picnic has been the fastest growing name in Dutch grocery for several years and works on a fixed weekly delivery slot for your street rather than an on-demand one.
Albert Heijn and Jumbo both deliver conventionally.
Crisp is the premium end.
The honest calculation: delivery makes sense if you are buying a full week for a household, and almost never if you are buying for one or two people in a city this compact.
Most of The Hague is a five minute walk from a supermarket, which is exactly why the discounters do so well here and why the grocery line in a Hague budget is one of the easier ones to move.
The one shop worth changing: if you currently do a weekly hundred euro shop at the most expensive end and move it to the cheapest, the Consumentenbond’s own arithmetic puts the difference at around 9 euro a week, which is roughly 468 euro a year.
That is a fortnight’s rent in some parts of this city, for the price of walking to a different street.
Sources
- Consumentenbond, prijspeiling supermarkten, survey of 6 May 2026: 131 budget groceries across 13 supermarket chains, Dirk and Nettorama 9% below average, Vomar 8% below, Hoogvliet 7% below, Poiesz 24% above and SPAR 18% above, and around 9 euro a week on a 100 euro basket amounting to about 468 euro a year
- Circana market share figures for 2025 as reported by FoodPersonality and MarketingTribune: Albert Heijn about 38%, Jumbo about 20%, Plus about 8%, Aldi about 6%, and a grouped 22% covering Dirk, Lidl, Vomar, Nettorama, Boni and Dekamarkt, with Lidl and Dirk not releasing individual figures
- Dirk store finder: branches at Torenstraat 132A and Simon Carmiggelthof 258 in Den Haag
- Hoogvliet store information: Den Haag branches including Het Kleine Loo 270, Forellendaal 318, Theresiastraat 145 and Oude Kustlijn 82
- De Haagse Markt and gemeente Den Haag, markten in Den Haag: Herman Costerstraat between Hobbemaplein and Hoefkade, around 500 stalls, open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, described as one of the largest markets in Europe
- Statiegeld Nederland and Verpact: 15 cents on cans and plastic bottles under one litre, 25 cents on plastic bottles of one litre and above, applying to drinks packaging in plastic and metal up to three litres
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