Giant Food Prices Ran About 7% Higher on a Delivery App Test. Here’s What Marylanders Should Know Before Ordering

You might expect your Giant Food groceries to cost about the same on a delivery app as on the shelf.

A 2026 DC News Now test in the D.C. area found otherwise.

Giant’s prices ran nearly 7% higher.

Here’s what Marylanders should know before ordering Giant Food groceries by app.

The Instacart Comparison

In a report published in March 2026, DC News Now compared Giant’s in-store prices with what customers see on Instacart.

On the app, Giant’s prices came out nearly 7% higher.

The report’s price table lists 10 staples you’d recognize, including brown eggs, 2% milk and ground beef.

Another chain, Safeway, went the other way, with its basket of 10 staples nearly 8% cheaper on Instacart than in the store.

So what you pay on Instacart can depend on the chain.

The test covered Instacart only.

Dollars and Fees on the App

At Giant, a nearly 7% gap would turn your $100 shelf total into almost $107 on the app.

That’s almost $7 more.

A $200 shelf total would come to almost $214.

The report gives one percentage for Giant, so your cart could land above or below it.

Ordering through Instacart adds delivery and service fees on top of those item prices.

DC News Now says that combination can make your grocery bill significantly more expensive than shopping inside the store.

Prices at Your Store

The Giant near you may not price its app orders the way the stores in the test did.

Giant, based in Landover, had 163 supermarkets across Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C., in May 2026.

The report doesn’t say which of them it checked, or when it collected the prices.

It’s titled for the Washington, D.C. area, so it can’t tell you what any one Maryland county pays.

Instacart said in December 2025 that retailers set the prices on its delivery site and may charge different prices at different store locations.

An app price can differ from the shelf price, and even from the price on a retailer’s website.

That makes the shelf tag at your store the price to check.

A 2020 Price Check

NBC4 Washington's December 2020 survey of 10 grocery stores priced a 60-item basket at Giant two ways.

A retail-analytics researcher built the basket.

Through Giant on Instacart, you'd have paid $189.59 for it.

Through Giant Delivers, formerly Peapod, you'd have paid $141.53.

That's a gap of about $48 before fees.

Giant said then that a large majority of its website prices matched in-store prices.

The story advised shoppers to order from a store's website to avoid item markups.

The 2026 test compared Instacart with the store, not with Giant's website or app, so it can't tell you whether that gap still exists.

The Predatory Pricing Act

Giant app orders can fall under Maryland's Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, which took effect on Oct. 1, 2026.

The law covers grocery stores of at least 15,000 square feet and services that deliver groceries to consumers.

A Greenberg Traurig summary says that effectively limits it to supermarkets and grocery delivery apps, such as Instacart.

The law bars them from using your personal data to set a personalized price.

It doesn't let you sue.

Instead, the Attorney General's office enforces it, after giving a business 45 days to fix a problem.

The law exempts promotional pricing and loyalty and rewards programs.

DC News Now's March report covered Gov. Wes Moore's push to ban dynamic pricing.

He signed it on April 28, 2026.

The report came out months before the law took effect, so it can't show how Giant's app prices look under it.

If an order total looks wrong, the office's Consumer Protection Division helps consumers resolve disputes with businesses through mediation.

It asks you to gather documents such as receipts.

Ordering Through Uber Eats

The nearly 7% figure comes from Instacart, so it can't tell you how Giant's Uber Eats prices compare.

Giant Food's parent company, Ahold Delhaize USA, announced in May 2026 that Giant Food stores are on Uber Eats.

Uber Eats doesn't appear in the report, which ran two months earlier.

A Giant Food release posted May 7 says its 163 stores are live on Uber Eats.

Neither announcement says whether Uber Eats prices match the shelf.

A September 2026 Uber page says that at stores with in-store pricing, item prices match what you'd pay at the register.

At other stores, prices may reflect a markup.

The page adds that stores control their inventory prices on the app.

The page doesn't name Giant, so it can't tell you which kind of store yours is.