Best Grocery Store Loyalty Programs: What Each One Actually Gives You
Almost every US grocery chain runs a loyalty program, and almost all of them are free. The difference is what you actually get: some hand you a fuel discount you can calculate to the cent, some sell you a membership, and some give you nothing but personalised coupons and decline to publish any earn rate at all. This comparison sorts them by that difference — and flags the chains whose own program pages do not tell you what a dollar is worth.
Contents
The three kinds of grocery loyalty program
Once you read enough program pages, the marketing language stops mattering and three structures appear underneath it.
Points that convert to fuel or groceries. You earn a point per dollar, and the points buy a discount at a published rate. Kroger is the clearest example in the US: 100 points equals 10¢ off per gallon, and the ceiling is printed on the page. This is the only model where you can work out in advance what a $200 shop is worth to you.
Paid membership. You pay a yearly fee and get delivery, fuel and streaming benefits instead of points. Walmart+ is the mainstream version. The maths is entirely different: you are not earning anything, you are pre-buying discounts, so the program only pays off above a certain spend and delivery frequency.
Free digital coupons with no published rate. You join, you clip offers, you get member pricing. There is no points balance and no conversion rate — the value depends on which coupons appear for you. Club Publix works this way and is upfront about it. Others use points language without publishing what the points are worth.
Side-by-side comparison
Figures below are quoted from each retailer's own program page. Where a cell says not published, we mean the operator's program page did not state a rate — not that the program is worthless.
| Program | Cost | Earn rate | Fuel benefit | Expiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kroger Plus | Free | 1 point per $1 on most groceries; 2 points per $1 on most gift cards | 100 points = 10¢/gal, up to $1/gal on up to 35 gallons (max $35 per fill-up) | End of the month after the month earned |
| Kroger Boost | Paid add-on | 2× points every day | Same redemption, reached twice as fast | Same as Kroger Plus |
| Walmart+ | $98/yr ($8.17/mo equivalent); $1 for a 30-day trial | No points — benefits instead | 10¢/gal at Walmart, Exxon, Mobil and Murphy stations | Not applicable |
| Club Publix | Free | Not published — digital coupons and member offers | None stated | Not applicable |
| Giant Eagle myPerks | Free | Not published on the program page | Perks can be earned on fuel-ups | Not published |
| Target Circle | Free, with a paid Circle 360 tier | Not published on the program page | None stated | Not published |
Program by program
Kroger Plus — the only one you can do arithmetic on
Kroger publishes the whole chain of conversions, which is rarer than it should be. You earn 1 point per $1 on most groceries and 2 points per $1 on most gift cards. Pharmacy earns separately: 25 points for a non-federally-funded prescription and 75 points for each 90-day script. Every 100 points is 10¢ off a gallon, and you can stack up to $1 per gallon on as much as 35 gallons — a maximum of $35 off a single fill-up.
Two details matter more than the headline rate. First, Kroger has added redemption for groceries rather than fuel: up to 1,000 points a day for $10 off. That quietly sets a floor on what a point is worth — 1¢ — and makes the program useful to people who do not drive. Second, points expire at the end of the month after the month you earned them, so a big shop in January is dead by the end of February. There is no cap on how many you can earn.
Kroger also runs a paid tier, Boost, which doubles point earning every day and adds delivery on orders over $35 and an ad-supported streaming service with annual membership. Whether it pays depends entirely on how much you already spend at Kroger — the doubling is worthless if you were not going to hit a useful points total anyway.
If you shop there, our Kroger receipt survey guide covers the separate feedback survey printed on their receipts.
Walmart+ — a subscription, not a loyalty program
Walmart+ costs $98 a year, which Walmart presents as $8.17 a month and as $57.40 cheaper than paying month to month. There is a 30-day trial for $1. In return you get free delivery on orders over $35, 10¢ per gallon off at Walmart, Exxon, Mobil and Murphy stations, member fuel prices at Sam's Club, and a choice between Paramount+ or Peacock on the ad-supported tier, swappable every 90 days.
Walmart's own page claims annual members save an average of about $380 a year, with a footnote clarifying that the figure is $382 among members of at least a year and excludes the $98 fee itself. Treat that as marketing: it is an average across people who chose to subscribe, which is not the same as what a new subscriber should expect. The honest way to evaluate it is to count your own delivery orders — at a $35 minimum and typical delivery fees, the fee pays for itself somewhere around one order a month, before you count fuel or streaming.
Walmart also runs a receipt survey, which is unrelated to Walmart+ — see our Walmart survey guide.
Club Publix — free, honest, and deliberately not a points scheme
Club Publix is free and does not pretend to be a points program. Joining currently gets $5 off a purchase of $20 or more, in-store only, for sign-ups through December 31, 2026. Membership gives digital coupons, the weekly ad a day early, purchase history and saved shopping lists, and a birthday offer.
There is no earn rate because there is nothing to earn — the value is entirely in which offers get targeted at you. That makes it impossible to compare numerically against Kroger, but it also means there is no downside and nothing to track. For a free program with a clear welcome offer, that is a reasonable trade.
Giant Eagle myPerks and Target Circle — free, but opaque
Both are free to join and both use the language of earning. Giant Eagle's myPerks page says you earn perks on groceries, gift cards and fuel-ups; Target Circle invites you to join free and runs a paid Circle 360 tier alongside it. Neither program page we checked stated how much a dollar of spending earns or what a perk converts to.
That does not make them bad — it makes them unquantifiable from the outside, which is a different problem. If you shop at either chain anyway, join: free is free. Just do not let a points balance influence where you shop when nobody will tell you the exchange rate.
The chains that will not tell you the rate
We set out to compare eight or nine chains and finished with six, because several major grocers do not publish program terms in a form anyone can read. Some pages returned nothing but navigation; one chain's loyalty page was behind a security block; another had moved without a redirect. In every one of those cases the program certainly exists — it just cannot be quoted.
This is worth naming because most "best grocery rewards" articles paper over it. When a page cannot be reached, the usual move is to copy figures from another blog that copied them from somewhere else, and those numbers go stale silently. We would rather show a shorter table where every cell traces back to the operator. If you want a rate we have marked not published, the reliable move is to ask at the customer service desk and get it in writing on the program's own terms page.
Stacking loyalty points with receipt surveys
Loyalty points and receipt surveys are separate systems that use the same piece of paper, and they stack. The loyalty program rewards the purchase; the survey rewards the feedback, usually with a validation code for a discount on your next visit. Nothing about entering one affects the other.
The practical order is: scan or enter your loyalty ID at checkout, keep the receipt, then complete the survey printed on it before the code expires. Our comparison of all 32 receipt surveys shows which chains give an instant coupon and which only enter you in a prize draw — worth checking before you spend ten minutes on a questionnaire for a sweepstakes entry.
One caution that applies to both: the survey URL is a magnet for imitation sites. If the address on your receipt does not match the page you land on, stop. Our guide on how to spot a fake survey site covers the specific signals worth checking.
Questions people actually ask
Which grocery loyalty program gives the most money back?
Of the programs that publish their rates, Kroger is the only one you can calculate. At 1 point per $1 and 100 points for 10¢ off a gallon, $1,000 of groceries earns 1,000 points, which is $1 off a gallon — up to $35 on a 35-gallon fill-up, or $10 off groceries if you redeem the points that way instead. Whether any program beats that for you depends on where you already shop; loyalty rewards rarely justify changing stores.
Do grocery loyalty points expire?
Often, and faster than people expect. Kroger states that points expire at the end of the month after the month in which they were earned, so points from a January shop are gone at the end of February. Programs that do not publish an earn rate generally do not publish an expiry rule either, which is a good reason not to treat an unquantified balance as savings.
Is a paid membership like Walmart+ worth it?
It depends on delivery frequency more than on grocery spend. Walmart+ is $98 a year with free delivery on orders over $35, so the fee is roughly covered if you place about one delivery order a month that you would otherwise have paid a fee on. Fuel savings of 10¢ a gallon and the included ad-supported streaming service are on top of that. If you shop in store and drive rarely, a free program will serve you better.
Can I use a loyalty card and a receipt survey on the same purchase?
Yes. They are run by different systems — the loyalty program by the retailer, the survey usually by an outside research firm — and neither excludes the other. Present your loyalty ID at checkout, then complete the survey printed on the receipt within the window stated on it.
Why do some chains not publish their earn rate?
Programs built on targeted offers rather than points have no single rate to publish, and that is a legitimate design — Club Publix says so plainly. Others use earning language without a published conversion, which leaves you unable to value the program. Neither means the program is a scam; it does mean you cannot compare it on numbers, so treat it as a bonus for shopping where you already shop.
Sources
- Kroger — Points Program (earn rates, 100 points = 10¢/gal, 35-gallon cap, expiry, grocery redemption). Checked July 28, 2026.
- Kroger — Boost Membership (2× points, delivery minimum, streaming benefit). Checked July 28, 2026.
- Walmart+ membership page ($98/yr, $8.17/mo equivalent, $1 trial, 10¢/gal, $35 delivery minimum, average-savings footnote). Checked July 28, 2026.
- Club Publix ($5 off $20 welcome offer, benefits list, no points system). Checked July 28, 2026.
- Giant Eagle myPerks (free to join; no earn rate published on the page). Checked July 28, 2026.
- Target Circle (free to join; Circle 360 paid tier; no earn rate published on the page). Checked July 28, 2026.