Costco On Instacart: Do You Need A Membership To Shop, And How Different Are The Prices?

Trying to shop at Costco without a membership is tricky at best. The company obviously wants you to sign up, since its entire business structure depends on customers paying annual fees for accessing high-quality, high-volume items at discount prices. However, it's not always a viable option, for various reasons. If you happen to fall into that category, there's some good news. You can actually access Costco goods when ordering through Instacart — with no Costco membership required. But in most cases, you'll pay more for those items, sometimes considerably more.   

Is it still a good deal for you to shop that way? It certainly can be, given Costco's lower prices overall, but it depends on how much you buy. The more you spend, whether in one go or throughout the year, the more the surcharges will stack up. Whereas if you purchased a Costco membership card at the current cost of $65 for the Gold Star membership, you can shop to your heart's content for an entire year at the lowest membership prices.

It's also worth noting that Instacart has its own shopping and delivery fees per order, which take more away from your shopping budget. A few examples could be revealing, so let's look at some comparisons from Costco shopping in the company's home-territory of Seattle. Prices, surcharges, and Instacart fees can vary in different regions and states.  

Before looking at direct comparison totals when shopping at Costco via the Instacart app, there's one distinction to make. There's a version of Instacart shopping available only to existing Costco members, called "Same-Day Delivery Powered by Instacart." If you have a Costco membership and order Same-Day Delivery through the Costco website, you won't get extra fees from Instacart. What we're covering here applies to non-members accessing Costco goods via the standard Instacart app. 

Right off the top, without a membership, you'll pay for several things aside from the actual cost of Costco items. There's a minimum delivery charge that varies per region, though it can be waived when ordering a day ahead for three-hour time-slot deliveries. Then there's a variable service fee on each order, plus an added driver tip calculated by percentage of the total order amount. 

After entering the in-app Instacart shopping portal and clicking the "Costco" option, a disclosure prominently states that prices vary from in-warehouse and are higher. For comparison, I opened two separate Instacart shopping screens: One without inputting my Costco membership number, and another with the number applied. Prices showed as much as 13-15% higher on Instacart without membership. For example, the Instacart cost for 18 ounces of Costco fresh blueberries was $11.18, but dropped to $9.83 with a membership. A 40-pack of Kirkland bottled water costs $4.96 on the app, but only $4.36 with membership. And the Instacart price for Costco's famous rotisserie chicken showed $6.21, dropping to $5.46 with membership.