We Measured Shopping Carts at 9 Retailers To Find the Perfect Fit for Every Shopper

Though they’re usually the first things you see when you walk into a grocery store, shopping carts are among the most overlooked aspects of retail shopping.

Who cares about shopping carts? For starters, retail businesses. Studies have suggested that bigger shopping carts lead to more items placed in carts, which in turn means more sales (and profits) for businesses.

Consumers — whether they know it or not — also have an interest in the shopping cart experience. A cup holder, more space below, or even an extra child seat could turn a trip to the store from a painful task into an enjoyable errand. In short, design matters for the customer experience.

To get a better “handle” on how shopping carts stack up against one another, the FinanceBuzz team went out and collected data (literally with a tape measure) from nine major retailers across the U.S. to find key differences at different stores. Using those measurements, we were able to calculate how much total volume each cart affords customers, how comfortable each cart’s handle height would be for the average person, and more.

Key Findings

• Carts at Sam’s Club have more volume than any other store, with a basket volume of 15,548 cubic inches. Aldi’s carts are the second largest, at 14,947 cubic inches.
• Dollar Tree has the smallest carts of any chain, at 6,720 cubic inches of basket space, followed by Trader Joe's at 7,765 cubic inches. Both carts have less than half the storage space of the carts at Sam’s Club.
• The tallest handles of any shopping cart can be found at Costco, where they are 45 inches off the ground. Handles at Dollar Tree are more than half a foot closer to the ground, with a height of 38 inches.
• Sam’s Club, Aldi, and Costco are the only stores with carts that have child seats that can fit two children.

Shopping cart superlatives

It can be easy to overlook the size and features of a shopping cart, especially since in most cases, there is very little in the way of variety available to shoppers. That’s why we wanted to compare some key stats side-by-side to show just how much shopping carts can differ from store to store.

With tape measures in hand, we took the dimensions of shopping carts at major retailers to find key differences and calculated approximate volume based on our measurements.

It would make sense for stores that sell items in bulk to provide consumers with larger carts. To that end, it wasn’t surprising that two of the largest warehouse-club chains in the country (Sam’s Club and Costco) have some of the biggest carts of any store. Ranging from about 13,500 to 15,500 cubic inches, carts at Sam’s Club and Costco hold between 58-68 gallons of products for shoppers to fill them with.

Sandwiched between those stores is another store that shares some underlying qualities with those warehouse clubs: Aldi, which offers 14,947 cubic inches (about the size of a small water heater) of cart space. While Aldi has a narrower focus when it comes to inventory, the store puts a similar emphasis on buying in bulk and offering very low prices, which encourages customers to buy more items per trip.

Sam’s Club and Costco may have the most total basket volumes and the only child baskets designed for multiple kids, but they don’t have the most space for children. Target, which recently (and controversially) redesigned its carts in 2024, has the most space for children — 3,289 cubic inches for that part of the basket.

Target is also one of just two retailers with cup holders built into their carts, though the placement of those cup holders has been the subject of some ire online. Target’s carts have cup holders near the handle of the cart, which also puts them near the child basket. This design choice has been criticized on social media and in the news, as parents noted that the cup holder placement makes it easy for small children to grab and spill any drinks placed there. Some people have suggested the front bow of the cart’s basket as a better cup holder location.

Stores with the biggest and smallest shopping carts

The numbers can tell us which shopping carts are the biggest and smallest based on the numbers, but they don’t truly convey all the ways one cart can differ from another. To help illustrate these differences (literally), we created the following guide using actual cart dimensions collected by our team to better visualize how different these carts are.

At 15,548 cubic inches, the carts at Sam’s Club are more than 500 cubic inches larger than any other store’s cart, which equates to enough storage space for four 2-liter bottles of soda with some room left over. The second-biggest carts can be found at Aldi, with a total storage space of 14,947 cubic inches in the cart’s basket. While Costco’s carts are taller and have wider handles than Aldi’s carts, the actual basket on Aldi carts is taller in the front and wider throughout the entire length of the basket, giving it more total volume. Additionally, Costco carts have child baskets that are entirely separate from and placed on top of the main basket, creating the illusion that the main basket is taller than it actually is when viewed from behind.

Dollar Tree’s carts can hold fewer items than any other store, with just 6,720 cubic inches of storage volume. That amounts to less than half the storage capacity of the carts at Sam’s Club, Aldi, and Costco. It is also more than 1,000 cubic inches smaller than any other cart, as Trader Joe’s cart is the second smallest and has 1,045 more cubic inches of storage space.

The best shopping carts for tall (and short) shoppers

Though volume is important, for shoppers on the taller or shorter end of the height spectrum, cart height can mean the difference between a casual walk and an achy back post-checkout.

For both men and women, Costco’s 45-inch tall handles would require the average person to reach upwards slightly. Women of average height will run into a similar problem at Target, Sam’s Club, Aldi, and Trader Joe’s. Most men should find the carts at those stores to be close to ideal for their height.

At 40-inches tall, the cart handles at Walmart fall in between the ideal comfort zones for both men and women, while the handles at a regional grocery chain (39.5 inches), Whole Foods (39.5 inches), and Dollar Tree (38 inches) are a comfortable height for women but may require most men to reach down or bend over to use.

Tips for saving more at the store

Regardless of how big or small a shopping cart is, what shoppers really want is the best deal possible on their purchases. Here are some tips for increasing your savings no matter where you’re shopping.

• Get rewarded for buying groceries. Buying groceries is one of the most common recurring chores for many people, and using one of the best credit cards for groceries is a great way to earn cash back and other rewards every time you restock the fridge and pantry.
• Saving money? There’s an app for that. From budgeting to investing to finding coupons, there are a world of money-saving apps available to savvy consumers.
• Keep an eye on your budget. With cost of groceries skyrocketing, it’s likely taking a bigger bite out of your budget. A good budgeting app can help you keep an eye on your spending patterns and show you where you can save (or splurge).

Methodology

FinanceBuzz manually collected the same measurements from shopping carts at each store in October and November 2024. The following measurements were collected for each cart:

• Handle length
• Handle height
• Main basket height at the back, middle, and front of the cart
• Main basket length for both the top and bottom of the cart
• Main basket width at the back, middle, and front of the cart
• Length, width, and front and back height of child basket
• Child basket capacity

Those measurements were then used to calculate the main basket and child basket volume for each cart.

To determine the volume of the child basket we used the standard formula to find the volume of a trapezoidal prism.

To find the volume of the main basket, we first used the tallest and longest dimensions of the cart to find the volume of a cube. We then used the shorter dimensions we collected to calculate the volume of a triangular prism and subtracted it from the volume of the cube. This was done to account for the unique shape of most shopping carts. Finally, we reduced the new total by 25% to account for how shopping carts tend to narrow from back to front and the space lost to the materials used to construct child baskets.

Average U.S. male and female heights were sourced from the CDC and Healthline.

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