By MoneyBees
See what cooking at home saves you against eating out, from your own meal costs or SingStat's average hawker prices, per meal, per year and over the years as prices rise.
Take the price of your meal out, subtract what the same meal costs to cook, and multiply by the meals you switch. Chicken rice and a kopi at SingStat's August 2026 averages cost S$5.67; against S$2.80 to cook, five meals a week save S$746.20 a year.
SingStat's average retail prices for August 2026 put chicken rice at S$4.23 a plate, economical rice with 1 meat and 2 vegetables at S$3.80, fishball noodles at S$4.43 and chicken chop at S$7.93. A kopi or teh with condensed milk averaged S$1.44.
SingStat's CPI for hawker centres, food courts, coffee shops and kiosks rose 2.4% in the year to August 2026. From 2019 to 2025 it rose about 3% a year on average, including 5.7% in 2022 and 6.1% in 2023.
Not always. One person cooking small portions can waste food, and economical rice at an average of S$3.80 is hard to beat for some meals. The calculator shows a negative saving when your home meal costs more than eating out.
SingStat's Household Expenditure Survey 2023 found households spent S$965.70 a month on food and beverage serving services, more than twice the S$455.90 they spent on food and drink to prepare at home.
The calculator shows the hours a year you spend cooking and washing up, and what each of those hours saves you. Whether that is worth it is your call.
The ingredients for that meal, plus gas or electricity, containers and anything you throw away.
Yes. Half of each CDC voucher tranche is for participating heartland merchants and hawkers, and half for participating supermarkets, so they can go towards either side of this comparison.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).