What does PocketAthlete actually do?

You log each morning: sleep, soreness and fatigue. It scores your readiness, adjusts that day's session, and builds four-week training blocks around your sport, your position and the equipment you have.

Is it only for footballers?

No. It covers football, rugby, basketball, running, weightlifting and general gym training, with position-specific work for the team sports.

No. Tell it what you have and it programs around it. Many of the technical drills need nothing but a ball and a wall.

Can it work around an injury?

It works around soreness you log and avoids body parts you tell it to leave alone. It is general training information, not medical advice — see a physiotherapist for a diagnosis.

What is the cheapest protein source in the UK?

Red lentils — £0.31 for 30g of protein, which is 120g.

How much protein is one serving?

We cost everything per 30g, which is about what a single meal's protein serving is meant to deliver for most people.

Is cheap protein worse protein?

Cost per 30g is a price comparison and nothing more. It says nothing about amino acid profile, how full a food leaves you, or whether you enjoy eating it — all of which decide whether you actually keep eating it.

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The cheapest protein in a UK supermarket

3 September 2026

Protein is the most expensive part of most people's shopping, and the price per gram varies far more than the packaging suggests. So we costed it: 23 foods that qualify as high-protein sources, each priced for the 30g of protein you would actually build a meal around, at UK supermarket prices.

The cheapest protein on the list is red lentils at £0.31 for 120g. The dearest is cooked king prawns at £3.19 — 10.2 times the price for the same 30g.

What counts as a high-protein food here

A food qualifies only if you could eat a realistic portion of it and get somewhere near 30g. That rules out foods with a good protein percentage that nobody eats in quantity: the portion is capped at 300g, so a food that would need half a kilo to hit the target does not make the list at all.

It also has to get a fifth of its calories from protein. Without that rule the list fills up with foods that are technically protein sources and are mostly fat or starch, which is not what anybody means when they ask where to get protein cheaply.

Plants are cheaper, and the gap is not small

The cheapest plant source is red lentils at £0.31. The cheapest animal source is greek style yoghurt (0% fat) at £0.75. That is £0.44 of difference for the same 30g, every time you eat it.

This is not an argument for eating one or the other. It is the number that decides whether hitting a protein target is affordable, and most people have never seen it laid out.

Why the price per 100g on the packet misleads you

Shelf pricing is per kilogram of food, not per gram of protein, so two products at the same price per kilo can differ by several times once you account for how much protein is actually in them. A cheap-looking food that is a fifth protein needs five times the weight of one that is mostly protein, and the shelf label says nothing about that.

Costing per 30g is the comparison that survives contact with a real meal, because 30g is roughly what one serving is meant to deliver.

The dearest protein is not the best protein

Cooked king prawns sits at the top of the list at £3.19, and nothing about that price makes the protein in it work differently. Price tracks how the food is farmed, processed and shipped, not what happens to the amino acids after you eat them.

The practical version: build the base of your week from the cheap end and spend the difference on food you actually want to eat. A protein target you hit for £0.31 a serving is one you can keep hitting in March, which is the only property that matters over a season.

How to use the number without weighing everything

You do not need to cost every meal. Pick three or four sources from the cheap end of the list and rotate them — that is most of the saving, and it takes one decision rather than a hundred.

The portions are the part people get wrong. A source only counts if the portion is realistic: the index caps a serving at 300g precisely because a food needing half a kilo to reach 30g is a food you will stop eating within a fortnight, whatever the arithmetic says.

And check the whole meal rather than the ingredient. A cheap protein cooked in something expensive is not a cheap meal, which is why the recipes here are costed end to end rather than by their headline ingredient.

Where this data comes from

Every one of the 335 recipes in PocketAthlete is costed ingredient by ingredient from the same price table, which is why we had the numbers to build this in the first place. The index updates when the prices do — nothing here is a figure typed into an article.

That also means this page is checkable. The full index lists every one of the 23 foods with its portion and its price, so you can see the working rather than take the ranking on trust.

Common questions

What is the cheapest protein source in the UK?: Red lentils — £0.31 for 30g of protein, which is 120g.
How much protein is one serving?: We cost everything per 30g, which is about what a single meal's protein serving is meant to deliver for most people.
Is cheap protein worse protein?: Cost per 30g is a price comparison and nothing more. It says nothing about amino acid profile, how full a food leaves you, or whether you enjoy eating it — all of which decide whether you actually keep eating it.

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