«What’s Cheaper» is an AI media platform tracking grocery prices for students. Every Wednesday at 7:00 PM, Rosstat publishes the average prices for 43 products. Our robot calculates overnight what has gotten cheaper or more expensive, and the «What’s Cheaper» edition is released Thursday morning. On Friday, the AI compiles a weekly shopping menu based on the cheaper items and a shopping list using Moscow prices, while a human verifies the figures and tries the recipes. The media is available on VKontakte, Telegram, and MAX, and the «How Much in the Cart?» bot customizes menus to fit a budget and analyzes receipts.

Example based on real data as of September 28, 2026: 10 out of 43 products have dropped in price. Potatoes are down 3,2%, apples are down 2,5%, and cabbage is down 2,3%; tomatoes are up 2,0%, and eggs are up 1,9%. This week’s menu, based on Moscow prices, costs 914 ₽, and a serving of cabbage soup is 16.89 ₽.

The minimum academic stipend starting September 1, 2026, is ₽2,296 per month (Ministry of Education and Science Letter No. MN-11/1940). This covers 3.7 meals at a café: the average meal in a dining hall or café across Russia costs ₽627 (Rosstat, 09/28/2026). Furthermore, a minimum set of 33 food items in Moscow costs ₽9,424 per month (Rosstat, August 2026). Food is the primary expense for a student—it consumes more than a third of the budget (Central University and T-Data, 2025).

Prices fluctuate wildly, making it nearly impossible to determine what is currently a good deal. The borscht set (1 kg each of potatoes, cabbage, onion, beets, and carrots) costs 241 ₽—27% cheaper than the July peak, but 23% more expensive than last year (calculation based on Rosstat average prices). Meanwhile, people feel inflation 2.4 times more acutely than the official rate: observed inflation is 15,1%, while the official rate is 6,3% (INFOM survey for the Central Bank, September 2026).

The media’s goal is to ensure students eat well while staying within budget: within the first month of using the service, the reader should purchase from our weekly menu at least once and spend less on food than before.

Objectives:
1. Demonstrate price decreases using weekly Rosstat data, not just subjective feeling.
2. Compile the weekly menu: seven dinners featuring discounted items, along with a shopping list and prices for Moscow.
3. Teach users how to decipher sales and receipts: identifying where a discount is genuine versus where the price has merely returned to the average.
4. Build a community: readers share receipts to show real, localized prices across different districts.

Goals for the first 6 months: 20,000 combined followers across VKontakte, Telegram, and MAX; 5,000 saved shopping lists per month; and an engagement rate (ERR) of no less than 15%.

Segment: Money and daily spending — a media outlet about personal finance.
Topic: Food and groceries — the most frequent expense, subtopic — food prices: what is getting more expensive, what is getting cheaper, and why.
Niche topic: what became cheaper this week — and a menu made from those items for a student.
Reader’s main question: «What should I buy for the week to stay within budget?»
We do not cover: restaurants and prepared food delivery, fitness/dieting, advertising specific chains, or cashback coupons without verification.

Why now? The price dropped—but only temporarily: in June 2025, a borscht kit cost 392 ₽; by October 2025, it had dropped to 194 ₽; in July 2026, it rose again to 330 ₽, and now it is 241 ₽ (calculated using average Rosstat prices). Vegetable prices change every week, and without regular monitoring, you won’t know when to buy.

Consumers seek value: 52% of purchases in retail chains are made during promotions, with an average discount of 30% (Nielsen, 12 months through November 2025), and it is becoming harder to distinguish a true discount from the regular price. 81% of Russians are saving on food; one in three started doing so only in 2026 (Prognosis and Shopper’s, 06/19/2026). Furthermore, 45% of Gen Z plan their weekly menu and shopping list in advance («X5 Club, ” 09/21/2026)—they need a pre-set plan.

Topics — A Week on the Shelf. Each one answers a reader’s question, and the week begins Wednesday evening when Rosstat publishes the prices:
• Thu 10:00 AM — «What Got Cheaper, ” the main feature: what to buy this week and what to put on hold.
• Fri 12:00 PM — „Weekly Menu“: what to cook for 7 days while sticking to the budget.
• Sat 11:00 AM — „Seasonal“: what is getting cheaper this month and how to cook it.
• Sun 7:00 PM — „Receipt Breakdown“: where I overspent this week.
• Mon 6:00 PM — „One Product—Five Dishes“: what to make with a package of buckwheat or chicken.
• Tue 6:00 PM — „Sale Check“: is −50% really a good deal?
• 24/7 — Bot „How Much in the Cart?“: menus for the budget and dorm kitchen, receipt photo analysis.

Navigation: hashtags for categories and products like #buckwheat, the «How to Read the Price Index» pinned item, and the menu archive by budget.

How we searched. We analyzed 3,000 posts across 30 Telegram channels for prices, discounts, recipes, and retail chains: subscribers were tallied via t.me counters, reach was measured by the median views of the last 100 posts, and ERR (Error Rate) was calculated as the median divided by the number of subscribers; post topics were determined by keywords. Additionally, we reviewed 1,109 channels using the mxstat catalog and checked application installations on Google Play and RuStore. All data is current as of October 2, 2026. VKontakte is protected by CAPTCHA, which we did not bypass.

Comparison Criteria (● yes, ◐ partially, ○ no):
C1 — Audience and Engagement: subscribers, median, ERR.
C2 — Data Reliance: Rosstat or receipts, date, and price source.
C3 — Practicality: menu, recipe, cart and portion price.
C4 — Student Budget: weekly budget, dormitory, scholarship.
C5 — Frequency: weekly rhythm, current prices.
C6 — Platforms and Bot: VKontakte, Telegram, MAX, bot, or application.
C7 — Money and Independence: network advertising, cashback, labeling.

Direct competitors: there are prices, but no dates or student data.
1. Retail Chain Channels. Pyaterochka has 864,853 subscribers on Telegram (ERR 2,7%); the seven chains combined have 2.38 million. A post titled «basket under 600 ₽ for two» garnered 304 thousand views—thirteen times more than usual. However, the chains only display their prices and will never admit that prices have increased.
2. Budget Recipes in MAX. «Recipes for Pennies» has 204,340 subscribers (ERR 26%); the nine channels combined have about 0.98 million. They demonstrate the demand for «cheap, ” but they publish ingredients without prices: only one of the nine channels lists the dish’s cost—and without a date or store information.

3. Media Price Monitoring—The «Mishka Index» and the «What’s Happening with Prices» segment on 71.ru. It’s a recognizable index with a clear weekly cadence and a «got more expensive / got cheaper» table, but it’s news without a menu, a shopping cart price, or a service. The second tier includes discount feeds («Freebie Seekers, ” 462,910 subscribers, ERR 1,7%), recipes without pricing („Kitchen Inside Out, ” 536,630, ERR 22,2%), and Rosstat itself on Telegram—10,644 subscribers and not a single post about weekly prices in the last 100.

Indirect competitors solve the same problem with a different product.
1. Yedadil (Yandex) — 50M+ installations on Google Play and 6M+ on RuStore: a catalog of promotions from all chains and cashback on receipts. However, it lacks a view of «what has become cheaper across the country, ” a menu, or a cart price.
2. T—ZH (T-Bank media) — 98,577 subscribers on Telegram and experiments using real receipts, such as „Week for 1000 ₽.“ But the experiment happened only once, in 2022 — there is no weekly rhythm or bot.
3. Food.ru (X5 Media) — 150,096 subscribers and thousands of recipes. However, the „Weekly Menu at Pyaterochka“ lacks any specific pricing.