The Pharmacy Price War: A New Chain Is Attacking Super-Pharm — We Checked How Much More It Really Charges

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-19 · 5 min read

40% — How much more, on average, the identical pack of Pampers Premium diapers (size 4) costs at Super-Pharm (₪48.90) than at the discount rivals Good Pharm and Rami Levy (₪34.50–₪34.90) — Superclear data, July 2026

Most of us file Super-Pharm and Good Pharm into the same mental drawer: "the pharmacy." It's where you buy over-the-counter medicine, sunscreen, diapers, shampoo and deodorant. But the moment you check what those exact products cost, it turns out the two chains sit at completely opposite ends of Israel's price map — and now a third player has arrived aimed precisely at that gap.

What happened: Farm Plus joins the "big bang"

In late April 2026, the Spir Group — owner of the Neto Hisachon, Super Spir and "Hakol Shelanu" food chains — opened the first branch of a new pharmacy network called Farm Plus, at Tel Aviv University's Broshim campus (Maariv). Brothers Oren and Avinoam Spir, who started in 1995 with a neighborhood grocery in Jerusalem, have set an ambitious target: dozens of branches by the end of 2026, and roughly 80 by the end of 2027 — with an emphasis on sports products, nutritional supplements, cosmetics and non-prescription medicine (Ynet).

The chain's marketing pitch is price. According to the reports, Farm Plus published a string of aggressive comparisons against Super-Pharm and the discount chains: a 16-pack of Gillette Fusion 5 blades at ₪119.90 versus ₪242.90 at Super-Pharm, Head & Shoulders shampoo 625ml at ₪11.90 (against a "regular" ₪22.90), Sano Maximum fabric softener at ₪7.90 (versus ₪17.90), and Dove body wash 750ml at ₪12.50 (Ynet). A careful caveat: these are launch prices the chain itself advertised and that the press reported — not an independent check by us, and some are quantity-limited. The coverage itself noted that on some products Farm Plus is in fact not the cheapest in the market. Still, the direction is clear: whoever enters this market enters through a price war.

Why now: one player's dominance

To understand why there's even room for a new player, remember how concentrated this market is. In June 2024, the Knesset Economics Committee approved — for second and third reading — a bill meant to rein in Super-Pharm's power, effectively applying chapters of the "Food Law" to the pharmacy sector. According to Calcalist, Super-Pharm holds about 80% of the pure pharmacy market, and roughly 50% if you also count the retail chains that sell toiletries and pharmacy products. The three main chains named there were Super-Pharm, Be and Good Pharm.

Good Pharm is no random chain: it's the cheap "pharma" arm of the Rami Levy group, and it keeps expanding. In its first-quarter 2026 results, the group reported rapid growth and continued opening of Good Pharm branches (TheMarker). So on one side, a giant that concentrates a huge share of the market; on the other, the growing discount arm of a food retailer — and now a new challenger waving its price tags. The only question that matters to the shopper is: how much is that gap actually worth?

What our data shows

This is where Superclear's price index comes in. It filters out the noise of launch promotions and measures a basket of hundreds of products shared across chains — diapers, toiletries, cleaning, baby care — precisely the items pharmacies sell alongside supermarkets. (The index does not include prescription drugs or exclusive cosmetics, only the products you can actually compare chain to chain.)

The result is sharp: Super-Pharm sits about 12% above the national median — the fourth-most-expensive of the 33 chains we track, pricier than most supermarkets. Good Pharm, by contrast, sits about 13% below the median — in the cheapest group, right next to Rami Levy and Yochananof. In other words, two chains everyone calls "the pharmacy" are separated by roughly 25 index points. The word "pharm" over the door tells you almost nothing about the price you'll pay.

That gap translates into shekels on a single product. We took an identical pack of Pampers Premium size 4 (28 units, same barcode) and checked its price across 1,276 stores nationwide (excluding Eilat, which is VAT-free): the range ran from ₪34.50 to ₪48.90. At Super-Pharm the typical price is ₪48.90 — the highest in the market. At Good Pharm it's ₪34.90, at Rami Levy ₪34.50, at Osher Ad ₪34.50, and at Shufersal ₪37.90. So on the exact same pack of diapers, Super-Pharm charges about 40% more than the discount rivals. (A fair caveat: this is a heavily promoted category, and at the VAT-free Super-Pharm branch in Eilat the price drops to ₪24.90 — a single product is an illustration, not the whole basket.)

One more figure worth remembering before you rush to a new chain: the variation within a chain. At Good Pharm, the gap between its cheapest and priciest branch in our data is about 19% (82 branches); at Super-Pharm, about 11% (306 branches). Even a chain considered "cheap" has branches meaningfully pricier than others — so even if Farm Plus manages to build a discount image, not every one of its branches will necessarily be the cheapest.

The bottom line

Farm Plus's entry is good news for shoppers: more competitive pressure in a market long dominated by a single player. But the real lesson from our data isn't "there's a new chain, run to it" — it's that the discount option in pharma already existed (Good Pharm, and the cheap food chains selling the same toiletries), and that the gap between an expensive "pharm" and a cheap one is measured in tens of percent on the very same product.

So don't trust the sign over the door. Shampoo, deodorant and diapers sell under an identical barcode at every chain — and the price difference, as our data shows, can reach 40% and more. Before you assume that "it all costs the same at the pharmacy anyway," it's worth checking the product itself — not the name on the storefront.

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