What started as a passing question from his girlfriend’s mom has turned into one of South Africa’s most-downloaded and helpful new apps for shoppers.
Johannesburg, South Africa (03 March 2026) – Ethan Stander, a 24-year-old software developer from Johannesburg, spent two years building Grocify, a free tool that compares grocery prices across the country’s biggest grocery shops in real time.
The app covers SPAR, Checkers, Pick n Pay, Woolworths, and Shoprite. It launched publicly in February with zero marketing budget. Within 48 hours, it had been downloaded 15,000 times!
It started with a question from the mom of Ethan’s girlfriend. She, like thousands of money-savvy South African shoppers, spent a fair amount of time hunting down the best grocery deals. A rather laborious task of comparison.
She turned to him one day and asked: ‘Can you just make an app that does all of this?’
Ethan, then 22 and still at university, turned the idea over in his head for a moment. His first instinct was no. Two weeks later, he started trying anyway.
“As a university student living at home, I didn’t know if people would even find something like this useful, but at the start it was the sheer challenge of the technical aspect that kept me coming back.” says Ethan.
Two years on, that idea has blossomed into Grocify – a free app that compares grocery prices in real time across South Africa’s major retailers. Ethan, now working as a software developer in Johannesburg, built the whole thing in his spare time.
“My hope is that it’ll remove decision fatigue and give consumers more time. When it comes down to it, if you give people clear facts that they can interpret, it’s easier to make a decision.” he says.
If you’ve ever stood in a queue at the shop wondering whether the same item is R10 cheaper down the road, or spent Sunday evening flipping between five different retailer apps trying to plan a cost-effective weekly shop, you will understand the problem Grocify solves.
You search for a product, and the app shows you exactly what it costs across all five major chains, instantly, side by side. You don’t need to switch between apps or scribble prices down.
With the cost-of-living ever on the climb, the perk of knowing before you leave the house which store gives you the best bargain is a big win. Savings can add up to hundreds of rands a month.
One feature wasn’t in the original plan at all, but it might be the most practically useful thing in the app…
Ethan realised that a price comparison alone still left one question unanswered. Is the cheaper basket actually cheaper, once you factor in the petrol it takes to get there? Driving across town to save R30 on groceries doesn’t make much sense when the fuel costs R50. So he built in an automatic fuel price calculator that factors in the distance to each store and the current petrol price, giving you a truer cost comparison.
“Even if the basket is cheaper at one store, what’s the cost in petrol?” he says. “Are you actually saving money? It was a very good question, so I added the feature to cut out decision fatigue completely.”
The app launched with no ads and no account set-up required. All you need to do is download from Google Play and enable your location for the system to find shops near you.
Ethan says the response since launch has been unreal.
“I’ve received so many emails from people telling me how much easier the entire experience of shopping has been made by the app, and that makes it worth it multiple times over.”
Looking ahead, Ethan’s focus is on bug fixes, refining the user experience, and potentially exploring partnerships with the major retailers. His advice to young South Africans sitting on an idea but uncertain whether to act on it, is to dive in and try. Failures can pave the way to success.
“You have time to burn, time to fail. So if you have what you think is a good idea, you need to try, and put your full heart into it, until it works, or until it doesn’t and you use the experience to make an even better idea work.”
Grocify is free to download on the Google Play Store. There is another app with the same name, so look for the correct version – we’ve shared the logo below.
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