The Most Affordable Stores for Back-to-School Supplies in Every State
Back-to-school shopping is big business — but there are still plenty of deals to be found.
America’s annual back-to-school spend is around $40 billion, including around $6.3 billion on stationery such as notebooks, folders, scissors and pens. Ahead of the 2024-25 school year, parents expected to spend $586 per child for school supplies on average, including clothing ($169), shoes ($113), electronic devices ($206) and stationery ($94), according to the United States Senate Federal Credit Union.
But around half (48%) of families leave back-to-school shopping until the last two weeks before school, missing out on off-season bargains and giving retailers the edge in optimizing their price strategy. Plus, a last-minute shop reduces the freedom to shop around — and there are bargains to be found if you know where to shop.
To help you save, our deal-hunting experts manually collected the prices of 52 essential school supplies across 26 top chain stores. Our findings uncovered the most affordable stores in every state, helping families on a budget find the best back-to-school deals this year.
Key Findings: Best Back-to-School Deals
- Walmart is the most affordable store to buy back-to-school goods on a national level — a basket of supplies at Walmart is 60.1% cheaper than the average across other top stores.
- Aside from Walmart, Dollar General has the most items that are cheapest in class, with a particular emphasis on writing and drawing supplies.
- Shoppers can bring the price of supplies down by picking up individual items from different stores — for example, graph paper and erasers cost the least at Meijer stores.
- Buying school supplies from Kroger stores like Dillons or Smith’s costs 2.9 times less than buying from Albertsons stores like Pavilions and Star Market.
- School supplies at Target cost 30.4% more than at Walmart on average, but Target may be cheaper if you capitalize on last-minute reductions.
Find the most affordable school supplies in your state.
This interactive table helps you find the most affordable store for school supplies in your state. Use the state filter to see stores near you, and check the columns to view guide prices for our sample supply list at each school level.
On a national level, Walmart works out the cheapest overall. A basket of school supplies, if you have a kid in elementary, middle and high school, costs $105.88 at Walmart, which is 18.4% less than its nearest competitor, Dollar General ($129.75). You can see how the stores size up nationwide in our bubble chart below.
Walmart made a strategic decision to freeze year-on-year prices on school supplies in 2023, reasoning that “with 80% of customers expecting to spend more on supplies this year, …we’re excited to offer the school supply basket at the same prices as last year.” This followed a decline in spending as the cost of living crisis intensified — with parents expected to ramp up spending to restock after a fallow period.
While this is how the top stores stack up when buying a basket of the cheapest regularly priced items, it is worth looking out for bargains in advance or even delaying your school shop until term has started.
For example, school supplies at Target cost 30.4% more than at Walmart on average, rising to 33.3% for middle school in particular — but Target may be cheaper if you capitalize on last-minute reductions. Writing for Business Insider, Terri Peters says she visited Target a week after schools went back and found that “the shelves that weren’t completely bare were filled with half-off merchandise such as backpacks, pens, and notebooks. This included cute Barbie and “Mandalorian” licensed merchandise and school supplies from big-name brands such as Elmer’s and Ticonderoga.”
The cheapest stores for every back-to-school item
If you have time to shop around or regularly visit different supermarkets, you could bring the price of our sample basket down by picking up individual items from different stores.
We identified the cheapest places to buy 22 back-to-school essentials and found that 16 of them are cheapest at stores other than Walmart. You can check the table below if there’s something specific you need or if you’re likely to visit more than one supplier.
Aside from Walmart, Dollar General has the most items that are least expensive in class, with a particular emphasis on writing and drawing implements. Dollar General maintains an inventory of over 100 school items at a dollar or less and offers seasonal discounts to verified teachers.
A set of 24 colored pencils is 38 cents cheaper at Dollar General than at Walmart, and the cheapest pack of 10 ballpoints is 57 cents cheaper. Notably, Dollar General also offers a five-buck backpack — Walmart’s cheapest bag, which comes under the Gastropod label, costs up to 51.2% more.
How to reduce the cost of back-to-school essentials.
Strategizing your approach to inevitable school costs can help keep the overall bill down. Here are five tips to make the back-to-school shop affordable.
- Make a list. Stationery is seductive — make a list of essentials before you get to the store and only buy what’s on it.
- Audit your supplies. Pens, scissors and notebooks tend to go missing in backpacks and around the home. Collect everything you already have, and you may find there are items you can tick off before you go shopping.
- Plan for tax holidays. Some states waive taxes on school supplies for a few days each year. Check the dates your state has a sales tax holiday, long before you plan to shop.
- Put money aside. Your back-to-school classroom bill could be anything from $90 to $150 or more. Put aside $10 per month in advance, and the hit will be easier to take when the time comes.
- Involve your child. Make a stationery budget on paper with your child before you go shopping. This can help manage their expectations and even motivate them to look for savings.
Keeping the back-to-school budget manageable is a helpful lesson in financial literacy for all involved and means starting back in class with the pleasure of that first blank page in the notebook.
Methodology
We manually sourced the prices of essential elementary, middle and high school supplies from the most popular national and regional stores across America.
First, we curated a seed list of 52 essential school supplies divided by grade (elementary, middle and high school).
Next, we found the prices of these items from 26 national and regional chains, favoring the cheapest option available.
To discover the most affordable stores overall, we calculated the total cost of supplies across all three grades for each store.
Data is correct as of March 2025.
DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, tax or legal advice.
