Too Good To Go, Lidl Plus and OLIO compared for surplus-food bags, supermarket coupons and neighbour food sharing to cut the bill.
Spending less on food works in two distinct ways, and the best apps rarely do both. Coupon and loyalty programmes lower the price of exactly the shopping you planned, in exchange for data and a scan at the till. Surplus-food apps sell what a shop would otherwise throw away at a steep discount, but you do not choose the contents. A third, more local model simply gives surplus away between neighbours. Combining the approaches, planned shopping with discounts and improvised meals from rescued bags, is where the savings compound. The 3 apps in this guide cover the supermarket loyalty, surprise-bag and neighbourhood models, each answering a different moment of the week.
Too Good To Go sells surprise bags of unsold bakery, supermarket and restaurant food at a fraction of the price, cutting waste and the bill.
Shops with surplus at closing time list surprise packs through the app: you pay a steeply discounted price, collect within a fixed time slot, and receive whatever the outlet had left, which is why the contents are unknown in advance. It is one of the few services where saving money and reducing waste align directly, and availability across Spanish cities is broad, especially at bakeries and greengrocers. The trade-offs define the experience: you cannot choose the items, the best bags sell out quickly, and collection windows can be inconvenient. Best treated as a flexible bonus, not a planned shop.
Lidl Plus is a free in-store loyalty programme stacking personalised coupons and scratch-card offers at the till for regular shoppers.
It is not an online shop; it is a discount layer for the physical store. A scan of the app's code at checkout applies exclusive coupons, activates personalised offers based on purchase history and collects digital receipts, with scratch-card promotions layered on top. For someone who already shops at Lidl regularly the savings accumulate meaningfully over a year, and membership costs nothing. The exchange is data and focus: registration requires personal information, the promotions generate frequent notifications, and the discounts only work in Lidl's own stores, so it cannot replace a general grocery app.
OLIO sells nothing: it connects neighbours giving away surplus food and household items for free, from half-packs to pre-holiday clear-outs.
The premise is hyper-local: households and sometimes local shops list food they will not use, an oversized pack, fruit left before a trip, leftovers from an event, for collection by nearby neighbours at no cost, and non-food household items appear too. It runs on community goodwill rather than commerce and pairs naturally with Too Good To Go for anyone trying to close the zero-waste loop. Availability is the limiting factor. The community is still small in Spain and varies enormously by neighbourhood, so the feed is only useful where enough local users exist, and arranging pickup times requires flexibility from both sides.
Pros
Free food shared between neighbours
Household items as well as food
Genuine community, zero-commerce model
Cons
Community still small in Spain
Usefulness depends on your neighbourhood
Pickups require flexible timing
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
How much do you really save with Too Good To Go?
Bags are sold at a fraction of the retail value and usually contain considerably more food than the price suggests, particularly at bakeries and greengrocers where surplus volumes are high. The essential caveat is choice: you pay for a surprise bag assembled by the shop, so the saving is real but lands on products you did not select and may need to use quickly. It works best as a flexible supplement rather than the core shop.
Are supermarket loyalty coupons worth sharing my data for?
It is an explicit trade. The chain builds a detailed picture of what you buy and returns discounts tuned to that profile, so the annual saving is genuine while the cost is privacy: a thorough record of your spending held by the company. There is no universal answer; different people weight money and data differently. What matters is knowing that is the deal rather than assuming the coupons are free, and turning off notifications if the marketing becomes noise.
Is food near its date still safe to eat?
Two labels do different jobs. A best-before date marks quality, not safety, so products past it are usually perfectly edible once they look and smell normal; that is the category nearly all Too Good To Go bags fall into. A use-by date, found on fresh meat, fish and dairy, is a genuine safety limit and should not be exceeded. Confusing the two causes both unnecessary waste and, occasionally, real risk.
How do these apps combine for the biggest saving?
Split the roles deliberately: loyalty coupons from Lidl, DIA or Carrefour fund the planned weekly shop, while Too Good To Go supplies an improvised meal or a treat at a fraction of normal price, and OLIO clears specific items from neighbours at no cost. Attempting a full weekly shop through surprise bags fails, because specific ingredients cannot be relied on. Used in parallel the apps overlap barely at all and cover the whole food budget.
More related apps
App library · United States App Store. Prices and availability reflect the last check.
