Costco Kirkland Versus Brand Names

Kirkland is Costco’s in-house brand. From laundry detergent, to coffee, to dog food, to diapers and more,  Kirkland has quite a few products. Today, I thought I’d compare Costco Kirkland Versus Brand Names. Should you buy Kirkland? My answer is… Yes!

Costco Kirkland Pricing Versus Brand-Names

The Kirkland price is pretty much unbeatable. In fact, even when name-brand products are on sale, Kirkland’s regular prices are the least expensive per use product. Recently, I went around the store looking for on-sale brand-name products, and then compared them to the regular priced Kirkland equivalents.

Kirkland Fabric Softener Sheets vs. Bounce – On-sale Bounce sheets are 3.5 cents per use while regular priced Kirkland are 2.2 cents per use. About 37% less. At regular pricing, Bounce is 4.2 cents per use, making Kirkland almost 50% off!

Kirkland Water Filters vs. Brita – Brita water filters on-sale price are $3.62 per filter, while Kirkland filters are regularly priced at $2.99 per filter. Therefore, Kirkland is about 17% less. At regular pricing, Brita works out to $4.62 a filter, and so then the price difference becomes about 35% less.

Kirkland Toilet Paper vs. Purex – Purex toilet paper wasn’t on sale this week, but was priced at 22 cents/square meter. Kirkland’s regular price is 12.8 cents/square meter. About a 42% difference.

Quality

Generally speaking, how does Kirkland compare with name-brands? I guess the real question is, who makes Kirkland products? The short answer, it’s a mystery. I’m making an educated guess here, but I think Costco most likely has contracts with name-brand manufacturers to produce Kirkland equivalents with slight variations. For example, Kirkland products might be slightly older versions of the name-brand products…

For quality, I have an interesting example in comparing Kirkland furnace filters with 3M furnace filters since furnace filters display their rating. In this case, 3M’s filters are rated at 1500 MPR(Microparticle Performance Rating. The higher the MPR, the better.) Kirkland’s MPR is 2200. Therefore, Kirkland’s filter is better than the brand name.

When 3M filters are on sale, they work out to $11.33 per filter. Kirkland’s regular price is $10 per filter. A savings of almost 12%. At regular pricing, 3M is $14.66 per filter. Therefore, when both are at regular prices, Kirkland is almost 32% less.

Summary

I can’t compare every Kirkland product against its brand name competitor but from the 4 examples above, the Kirkland equivalent was always significantly less. Even when the brand-name was on-sale, Kirkland’s regular price still had them beat. I’ve never had an issue with Kirkland’s quality, so for me, I’ll always go with Kirkland. Maybe one day, I’ll find a Kirkland product I don’t like…. maybe.

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