Gone are the days of battling Christmas crowds in the supermarket with a toddler in tow, thanks to UK supermarket delivery services. They have made the process quicker, easier and less painful for all involved.
Requests for supermarket Christmas delivery slots are renowned for crashing websites with hundreds of thousands of people fighting over limited slots. No wonder there’s a lot of interest in how to book deliveries and how close to Christmas they can be made.
These days, most supermarkets deliver and offer collection services for groceries, including Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Asda, Iceland and Morrisons - though not yet Aldi or Lidl.
Most supermarkets have now opened up their Christmas delivery slots for 2023. Further down this feature we’ll review the pros and cons of their services. If you just want to know about the slots, here they are:
UK supermarket delivery slots 2023, at a glance:
- Tesco Christmas delivery slots between December 20 - 24 are bookable soon
- Waitrose Christmas delivery slots between December 20 - 24 are bookable now
- Sainsbury’s Christmas delivery slots between December 18 - 24 are bookable now
- Ocado Christmas delivery slots between December 20 - 24 are bookable now
- Asda Christmas delivery slots between December 20 - 24 are bookable now
- Iceland Christmas delivery slots between December 17 and 23 are bookable now
- Morrisons Christmas delivery slots between December 20 and 24 are bookable now
Which supermarket does free delivery?
Iceland is the only supermarket delivery site to offer free delivery, but it’s not a blanket rule for every slot. You’ll have to spend a minimum of £40 if you want free next day delivery. Other orders between the minimum spend of £25 and £40 cost £3.
More supermarket delivery FAQs
How we chose the best supermarket delivery services
We compared all the major supermarkets plus some new delivery services, on variety, value for money, ease of use, delivery cost, delivery time and minimum spends to compile the list below.
1. Tesco
Best supermarket delivery service overall
Tesco Christmas delivery slots available: December 20 - 24, bookable soon
Tesco Christmas click and collect available: December 20 - 24, bookable soon
- Minimum spend: £50 (a £5 basket charge is added for orders under £50)
- Cost of delivery: £3 - £7
- Earliest delivery: from 20 minutes with Tesco Whoosh
Tesco made headlines last year after opening its Christmas delivery slots to the public, with almost 300,000 people on the site resulting in a system crash, and thousands of people losing places after queueing for hours. We’re still waiting for Tesco to release its Christmas slots for this year but we suspect they’ll be for the dates between December 20 and 24. We’ll keep you updated as and when we know more.
Variety and flexibility are the order of the day for Tesco. There’s a partially enforced minimum charge, with a £5 basket charge for orders under £50. Clubcard holders benefit from regular “Clubcard Price” discounts across hundreds of products. The Tesco app works seamlessly well, so it’s easy to shop for your favourites when you’re out and about. A lot of necessity products are also price matched with Aldi for a cheaper shop.
Delivery covers most of the UK. Designated one-hour slots cost between £3-7 or you can select a flexi saver slot between 3 and 7pm for between £1-4. There’s also a “Delivery Saver” option which comes with free home delivery (excluding same-day slots) and free click and collect for £7.99 per month.
2. Waitrose
Best UK supermarket delivery service for choice
Waitrose Christmas delivery slots available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
Waitrose Christmas click and collect available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
- Minimum spend: £40
- Cost of delivery: £3
- Earliest delivery: 20 minutes (on Deliveroo)
Waitrose is one of the most popular supermarkets around Christmas time, likely because shopping there feels like a bit of a treat and the festive season is all about indulgence. Delivery slots are already open for deliveries and click and collect services between and including December 20 and 24.
Waitrose.com is one of the best-stocked suppliers of both pantry snacks and fresh food: a search for ‘chicken’ yields almost 400 results. There is even more choice on Waitrose Cellar and Waitrose Entertaining for all of your alcohol and canapé needs. All food comes with a freshness guarantee and the competitive offers for first-time shoppers and tempting range of recipe inspiration available on site are also advantageous.
Ordering is easy on both the website and app, with labelled categories and a ‘favourites’ list that speeds up the process. Minimum spend is £40 for home delivery and there is free trackable next-day delivery to homes all over the UK, seven days a week. Home deliveries incur a small charge for picking and packing, but click and collect is free. There’s no minimum spend for Waitrose Entertaining.
3. Sainsbury’s
Best UK supermarket delivery service for dietary needs
Sainsbury’s Christmas delivery slots available: December 18 - 24, bookable now
Sainsbury’s Christmas click and collect available: December 22 - 24, bookable now
- Minimum spend: £40
- Cost of delivery: £7 for orders less than £40, £1 - £5.50 for orders more than £40
- Earliest delivery: same day (before 12pm)
Sainsburys’ delivery slots are already open, available on dates between and including December 18 to 24, as are the click and collect slots for December 22 to 24. Collections cost 50p, or £4 for baskets under £25. Same day click and collects costs £2 for orders over £25 and £6 for orders under £25.
With a minimum spend of just £25, Sainsbury’s offers a handy small-shop option. But note that delivery can cost £7 for smaller baskets. Larger orders over £40 incur just a £5.50 delivery charge. Regular customers can make savings, however, by investing in a Delivery Pass.
Ordering is simple and you can create a dietary profile so the site can flag up products that you should avoid. The range is as broad as you’d find in the supermarket itself and same-day delivery is sometimes available, provided you order by 12 noon and the don’t need your groceries before 6pm.
Alternatively, you can book a slot for another day from 8am to 11pm and order by 11pm for next-day delivery. Click and collect is also available from various locations and if you order by 11pm, you can collect the next day between 8am and 8pm. If you order by 12 midday, you can collect on the same day from 4pm.
Sainsbury’s follows in Ocado’s footsteps with their environmentally-conscious delivery service, with eco-friendly ‘green slots’, where you can schedule a delivery to coincide with when a Sainsbury’s van is in your area.
4. Ocado
Best UK supermarket delivery service for choice
Ocado Christmas delivery slots available from: December 20 - 24, bookable now
Ocado Christmas click and collect not available: Ocado is online only
- Minimum spend: usually £40 but £90 at Christmas
- Cost of delivery: usually 99p to £6.99, £3.99 to £9.99 at Christmas
- Earliest delivery: next day
Ocado Christmas delivery slots are now open for all customers, after opening early for Smart Pass customers. They are bookable for dates between December 20 and 24, but note as Ocado is online early, there is no click and collection. Be aware of Ocado’s spiked prices during Christmas - delivery slots can cost up to £9.99 and your minimum basket spend will have to amount to £90, instead of the usual £40.
Telegraph cookery writer Diana Henry favours Ocado and says, “when [it] started it was truly life changing for me. Prior to this I can remember spending most of Saturday morning in supermarkets.” However, while Ocado was previously synonymous with Waitrose, it joined forces with Marks & Spencer in 2020, so Henry uses both to get the best range of produce. Food columnist Xanthe Clay prefers to shop in-person, but says her top pick would be Ocado, too, as she’s “often tempted by their interesting range.”
Ocado offers a staggeringly wide range of products: thousands of M&S groceries, plus a broad range of other quality brands. The minimum spend is £40, but next-day delivery slots are usually available between 7am and 10pm. An Ocado “Smart Pass” waives delivery charges and offers customers priority access to slots. You can get a month’s free trial on the website.
Ocado has also tried to make deliveries as environmentally-friendly as possible with green delivery slots and has reduced their vans’ carbon dioxide emissions by 33 per cent from 2012 to 2018. The company also recycles carrier bags if you hand them back to the driver. Unwanted supplies are donated to food banks and charities.
5. Asda
Best cheap UK supermarket delivery service
Asda Christmas delivery slots available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
Asda Christmas click and collect available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
- Minimum spend: none (but an additional £3 for orders less than £40)
- Cost of delivery: from £1.50 or £8.50 for same day
- Earliest delivery: same day (if you order before 12pm)
Christmas delivery slots at Asda are mostly available to book now, although the Christmas Eve slots won’t be available to book until December 20 and there’ll be limited availability. Asda has said there will be more than one million home delivery and click and collect slots available the week before Christmas, and is even running limited delivery services from some stores on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
Asda has delivery slots from £1.50 with no minimum spend and offers same day delivery, keeping it cheap and fast. It’s one of the best deals we’ve found from supermarkets on delivery slots. For an express delivery, you simply need to order by 12pm and your shopping will arrive at some time after 4pm.
You can either pay ad hoc for your deliveries, or save money with an Asda delivery pass, which acts more like a subscription service. Alternatively, you can order Asda on Uber Eats or click and collect.
6. Morrisons
Best quick UK supermarket delivery service
Morrisons Christmas delivery slots available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
Morrisons Christmas click and collect available: December 20 - 24, bookable now
- Minimum spend: £25
- Cost of delivery: from £1.50
- Earliest delivery: same day via Amazon
Morrisons Christmas delivery or collection can be booked for a date between and including December 20 and December 24. Morrisons recommends heading to the site and booking a slot asap with a few items to secure it, then going back to edit and add to your basket.
Low prices on groceries and household products plus delivery slots from £1.50 makes Morrisons a good choice for feeding a family on a budget. There are thousands of offers on site at any time spanning Morrison’s own and branded products.
A £25 minimum spend applies, but delivery costs are low, and their Delivery Saver service starts from £5 or just £35 per year. The delivery service is fairly environmentally friendly, as you can book a ‘green van slot’ where Morrisons is already delivering to someone nearby in your area. Morrisons is committed to recycling its plastic bags and has pledged to make all of its packaging recyclable by 2025.
7. Iceland
Best next day UK supermarket delivery service
Iceland Christmas delivery slots available: December 17 - 23, bookable now
Iceland Christmas click and collect available: December 17 - 23, bookable now
- Minimum spend: £25 or £40 for free delivery
- Cost of delivery: free for orders more than £40, or £3
- Earliest delivery: same day
Iceland has an online Christmas food shopping service with 100,000 free slots with flexible delivery options between and including December 17 and 23, bookable now.
When ordering an Iceland supermarket delivery, you’ll need to choose a two hour delivery window which can be as soon as the next day, so long as you order before 11pm. There is a minimum spend of £25, for which you’ll pay a delivery fee of £3 on average. If you spend over £40 delivery is free. There is also a flat fee of £1 added to all orders for carrier bags. The two-hour slots are between 10am and 8pm every day, though they may vary slightly from store to store.
There is an option of same day delivery, though the pricing changes depending on where you live. You can use Iceland’s local store finder to double check the way your local store works.
Online grocery delivery services
Supermarkets are not the only ones offering to deliver your shopping. These days some apps will bring groceries to your door within an hour or two.
However, since the services below don’t have special Christmas slots and none of them offer click-and-collect, we have put them in their own category, separate from the supermarkets. Here are the best of the UK’s online-only services.
- Minimum spend: £15
- Cost of delivery: £2 - £7 (for Prime members)
- Earliest delivery: one hour
As the name might suggest, AmazonFresh specialises in delivering fresh food to your doorstep. Amazon has partnered with Whole Foods (which it owns), Morrisons, Booths and smaller-scale producers including artisan and local producers such as GAIL’s Bakery to supply a diverse selection of fruit, vegetables, meat and baked goods. You can book a two-hour slot for next-day delivery between 8am and midnight. Same-day delivery is also available. Alternatively, you can book a slot up to 28 days in advance.
Unfortunately, the service is exclusive to members of Amazon Prime, which costs £7.99 a month (although there is a 30-day free trial). It’s currently available in London and parts of the South East, Leeds, Sheffield, Portsmouth, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle. Minimum spend is just £15, with delivery fees starting at £2, although orders above £60 have free delivery within two hours.
- Minimum spend: £12
- Cost of delivery: £3.50
- Earliest delivery: the company run one delivery day per week, which changes based on location
As well as offering a wide selection of groceries, including fresh meat and fish, chilled produce and pantry items, Abel & Cole deliver organic fruit and veg boxes (from £12.50) and vegetarian meal kits (from £11). They are especially brilliant at deli items such as cheeses, charcuterie and nibbles, as well as fresh, seasonal fruit and veg – traditional favourites as well as more exciting squash varieties, gourmet mushrooms and sprouting carrots.
The minimum order value is £12 and delivery is £3.50, regardless of the value of the order. However, unlike supermarket shopping, you can’t choose an hour-long delivery slot – rather your groceries will be delivered on a round to minimise the distance between drops and keep the company’s carbon footprint down. You can specify a designated safe place for your groceries to be left if you’re out.
- Minimum spend: none
- Cost of delivery: £1.80
- Earliest delivery: 10 minutes
The appeal of quick commerce sites like Gorillas is clear: you can have an eco-friendly paper bag of groceries delivered to your doorstep by bike in under 10 minutes (yes, really). You order via an easy-to-use app available on Apple’s iOS or Android and it takes less than five minutes to set up.
You may imagine that each Gorilla driver is doing a rapid supermarket sweep to pick an order, but that’s not the case – products are sourced from “dark stores” or distribution centres. The downside is a more limited selection of products than the usual big supermarkets (although Gorillas still stocks thousands of options) and limited postcode coverage.
Gorillas currently serves Cambridge, Nottingham, Reading, Manchester, Southampton and London. There is no minimum order value. Most customers use Gorillas for essentials, drinks and snacks or top-up groceries rather than the big weekly shop. Delivery is usually within 10 minutes and costs a flat rate of £1.80.
- Minimum spend: £15
- Cost of delivery: £3.50
- Earliest delivery: 15 minutes
Quick commerce newcomer Beelivery has a unique business model: their drivers personally scour the supermarket to pack and pick your order. Delivery is within about 15-60 minutes, so slightly longer than services like Gorillas and Getir, but if for whatever reason you can’t get to the shops yourself, it could be a viable alternative for getting hold of essentials. The other advantage it has over Gorillas et al is that they cover a far wider area – 90 per cent of UK postcodes. The website and app are not quite as slick as its competitors, but are still easy to use.
- Minimum spend: £10
- Cost of delivery: From £1.99
- Earliest delivery: 10 minutes
Brand new on the scene, Getir launched in the UK in 2021, and delivers in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Southampton, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Cambridge, and Leicester. The super fast delivery service promises to delivery groceries to your door in 10 minutes, with a choice of more than 1,500 products. It all operates via the Getir app which can be downloaded on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
The app was founded back in 2015 in Turkey and has since expanded across Europe and the US. Minimum spend is £10 and delivery starts at £1.99, but varies depending on your location.
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