Plant-based staples are increasingly undercutting their animal-based counterparts on price, according to new research from advocacy group ProVeg Netherlands.

ProVeg, which surveyed nine Dutch supermarkets, found that a basket of plant-based minced meat, burgers, butter, milk, yogurt and cheese came in cheaper across the board — with average savings of 18 per cent and peaks of up to 30 per cent.

The findings build on a similar ProVeg study from 2024, which found that plant-based burgers, chicken-style pieces and minced meat were already priced well below their meat equivalents when compared package-for-package. The new research goes a step further, comparing the cheapest plant-based options against the cheapest animal products regardless of pack size — and finds that even small plant-based packages are now often more competitively priced than large meat packages on a per-kilo basis.

Retailer by retailer

Savings varied by chain, with Plus showing the largest gap at roughly 30 percent, followed by Dirk (28 per cent) and Lidl (24 per cent). ProVeg points to Lidl’s stated pricing policy — that plant-based meat and dairy alternatives should be priced at or below comparable animal products of similar pack size — as a model other retailers could follow.

“The idea that plant-based products are expensive prevents many people from eating healthier and more sustainably,” said Martine van Haperen, food industry expert at ProVeg Netherlands, in comments accompanying the research. She argues supermarkets are a key lever in the Dutch protein transition, tying the pricing trend to the sector’s stated ambition of shifting to a 60/40 plant-to-animal protein sales ratio by 2030.

Where the gap hasn’t closed

Not every category tells the same story. ProVeg’s data shows plant-based yogurt and quark lagging well behind meat and dairy alternatives on price — the cheapest plant-based yogurt on the market is, on average, more than double the price of the cheapest dairy yogurt.

Van Haperen attributes this partly to lower sales volumes limiting economies of scale, and partly to a structural gap in the product range: plant-based yogurt is rarely sold in the liter cartons common for dairy, making a like-for-like price-per-kilo comparison difficult to achieve.

Reading the numbers

A few caveats are worth flagging for anyone using this data to gauge the broader market. The research was commissioned and published by ProVeg, an organization whose stated mission is to reduce animal product consumption — it has a clear interest in demonstrating that plant-based eating is affordable, and the report functions as advocacy as much as market analysis.

The underlying methodology (basket composition, store selection, date of price collection, and whether promotional pricing was included) has not been independently published in full alongside the headline figures, so the precise comparability of “cheapest plant-based” versus “cheapest animal-based” items across differing pack sizes deserves scrutiny before being treated as a like-for-like measure.

That said, the directional trend — retailers using pricing strategy as a deliberate lever to shift purchasing behaviour — lines up with moves other European grocers have made publicly in recent years, including private-label plant-based ranges priced to undercut meat. Whether this reflects genuine cost parity in production versus subsidised loss-leader pricing by retailers chasing category growth is a separate question the report doesn’t fully answer.

The takeaway

For consumers, the practical signal is straightforward: at several major Dutch chains, choosing the plant-based version of staples like mince, burgers, butter, milk and cheese is now the cheaper default rather than a premium choice. Yogurt and quark remain the clearest exception, and closing that gap looks likely to depend on retailers expanding pack formats and volumes rather than on price cuts alone.