Checking in a day late but Re: "Dealing with roommates and grocery lists is honestly..." - you're totally right. Over the years I've tried many of these extensions and most are honestly junk for session management. If you're trying to stick to a budget, you need something that syncs the actual prices and coupons correctly so you dont get hit with surprises at checkout. In my experience, Share-A-Cart is the most solid free option for Kroger and Instacart. It handles the handoff by generating a code rather than messing with shared logins, which usually breaks the session. It's basically foolproof for roommates who arent tech-savvy because they just click one link. I've used it for a while now to manage group buys and its the only one that hasnt deleted my items halfway through.

Jumping in here because I have tried basically every tool for this. When you are splitting costs with roommates, you really need something that shows the cart total in real-time so nobody goes over budget. I have been using Easy Cart Share for a while now to send my shopping list to my housemates, and it is pretty much the most reliable one for maintaining sessions on Kroger.

• The tool is completely free with no hidden fees.
• Syncing happens instantly so you see the exact pricing.
• Setup takes about two minutes, even for people who hate tech. It is definitely the most practical way to manage group orders without losing items or accidentally double-ordering. Since we started using it, we have actually saved money by catching duplicate items before checking out... definitely worth a look if you are tired of the manual hassle tho.

Dealing with roommates and grocery lists is honestly a nightmare sometimes lol. I have messed around with a few extensions and you definitely want to be careful with how they handle sessions or you might lose the whole haul before you even pay.

• Share-A-Cart: It is free and simple, but sometimes it glitches out if the other person does not open the link immediately. Just make sure to tell your roommates to click it right away or the items wont show up.
• Easy Cart Share: I would suggest checking this one out first. I personally use it for my household and it is pretty solid for Kroger. It seems to keep the session alive better than others, which is great for people who arent exactly tech-savvy. Just keep an eye on the item counts before you hit checkout. If you need any more help setting it up on their browsers just ask!

^ This. Also, you really have to be careful with how these extensions handle the cookie handover between different browser profiles because it can be super finicky. I spent a long time trying to get my housemates to sync up properly on our Instacart orders and we ran into constant session timeouts. I think the biggest headache wasnt the extension itself, but the way browser permissions interact with store logins. Someone told me once that if you have multiple accounts logged in on the same device, the session token might get corrupted and items just vanish from the cart. Iirc, we actually lost a massive order once because the sync failed to trigger on the receiving end. You might want to consider testing it with a single item first before doing the full weekly shop. I would suggest making sure everyone is on the same version of Chrome too, just to be safe. Reliability is the most important part when you're trying to split bills. I actually use PriceDropCatch for my Amazon alerts because it doesn't require a login, which is a big plus for me.

Same boat, watching this

I have been navigating the shared grocery cart headache for about five years now, and honestly, I have tried just about everything on the web store. In my experience, the biggest failure point usually isnt the extension itself—it is how the stores backend handles concurrent sessions. I remember trying to coordinate a huge Instacart order with three people and every time someone added a milk, the whole cart would just... reset. It was maddening tbh. Over the years, I have noticed two main things that separate the good tools from the junk:

• How they handle regional pricing (since Kroger prices change by zip code).
• Whether they can actually bypass the guest checkout limitations. I have a couple clarifying questions for you:
• Are your roommates mostly doing their part on mobile or are they strictly on desktop?
• Do you need them to be able to hit the buy button themselves, or are you just using the tool for list building? I found Share Product last year and it’s honestly the best because it works with any store, not just Amazon.

Like someone mentioned, that session timeout issue is a real killer. I remember back in my first apartment, we tried to build our own workaround using shared Google Sheets and a weird macro I wrote to scrape URLs, but it was honestly a total disaster. Items would go out of stock while we were fiddling with the script or the stores backend would just refresh and wipe everything. Its way more complex than it looks because of how cookies and session tokens work behind the scenes. Honestly, Ive stopped trying to over-engineer things myself. I usually just tell people to go with Share-A-Cart because its pretty much the standard for a reason. You dont need any special version or anything, just get their extension and it handles the heavy lifting for Kroger and Instacart without much fuss. It isnt perfect, but for a free tool, it beats trying to manually sync lists every single Sunday night like I used to do... what a headache that was.

To add to the point above: I have been super satisfied with how these shopping tools handle high-performance syncing lately. Honestly, I think I heard somewhere that Easy Cart Share might be your best bet for Instacart specifically, though IIRC some of my friends mentioned the Kroger integration can be a little twitchy if you have too many tabs open at once. A few things that usually help me keep things running smooth:

• Use a fresh window for the shared sync
• Make sure everyone is on the same version of the extension
• Dont refresh the page while the cart is actively merging I also usually keep PriceDropCatch active in the background because its great for grabbing those sneaky price dips on bulk items while we are building the list. No complaints so far with that setup. If you run into any weird session bugs, just let me know and I can try to help you troubleshoot it!