If you’ve been shopping at Costco lately and something feels off about your haul, you’re not imagining things. A growing number of Costco members have been documenting a quiet, frustrating trend: products on the shelves are getting smaller while the prices stay exactly where they are. It’s called shrinkflation, and Costco, the warehouse chain that built its entire reputation on giving you more for less, has been getting called out left and right.
Shoppers have been posting side-by-side photos on Reddit, filming comparison videos on TikTok, and leaving angry comments on Instagram. And honestly? When you see the numbers, it’s hard not to feel a little cheated. Let’s go through what’s been shrinking, what Costco has said about it, and why this whole thing has people so worked up.
The Cookie Situation That Set People Off
One of the most recent examples hit a nerve with bakery regulars. Food blogger @costcobuys shared a video on Instagram showing Costco’s new brown butter sugar cookies, priced at $7.99. The problem? The pack only had 21 cookies. Costco’s cookie packs have traditionally come with 24. Three cookies just vanished from the package without any announcement or price adjustment.
Reddit users were quick to react. “Where did the other 3 go?” one person asked. Another wrote, “Man first they came for the muffins and then they came for the two dozen.” That second comment is a reference to an even bigger controversy, which we’ll get to in a minute. But the cookie situation was especially annoying because it felt so blatant. Same price, fewer cookies, new flavor nobody asked for. Classic move.
The Muffin Overhaul Nobody Wanted
Costco’s bakery muffins have been a staple for years. The old deal was simple: $9.99 got you two six-packs of giant muffins (12 total), and you could mix and match flavors. Then, toward the end of 2024, Costco pulled the plug on that setup. They replaced it with a single eight-pack of smaller muffins for $6.99. No mix and match. New flavors like butter pecan and lemon raspberry instead of classics like poppy seed and vanilla chocolate chunk.
Do the math and it gets worse. The new muffins work out to over 50% more expensive per ounce than the old ones. That’s not a subtle tweak. That’s a completely different product at a worse value, dressed up as a refresh.
Costco reportedly justified the change by saying customers had complained the old muffins were too big and that people couldn’t finish all 12 before they went stale. Maybe that’s partially true, but the response from loyal shoppers was overwhelmingly negative. One Instagram commenter summed it up: “Costco bakery items are no longer worth it.” Multiple Reddit users said the new recipe, which allegedly uses real butter instead of oil, makes the muffins spoil faster. One person claimed the cream cheese in the blueberry version went bad before their family could finish the pack. Others called the new muffins “dry” with “an off-putting taste.”
Kirkland Signature Products Are Shrinking Too
It’s not just the bakery. Costco’s own Kirkland Signature brand, which members rely on for bulk value, has been quietly downsizing. Kirkland Signature Organic Medium Salsa dropped from 38-ounce containers to 35-ounce jars. That’s three fewer ounces per jar. Costco switched the packaging from plastic to glass, which some people appreciated, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re getting less salsa for the same price.
Kirkland Signature Bath Tissue took a hit too. Reddit users pointed out that the 30-roll packs used to list 425 sheets per roll. The newer packs? Just 380 sheets per roll. That’s a 10.5% reduction, and the price per roll didn’t budge. Across a 30-roll pack, that adds up to 1,350 fewer sheets. You’ll be making an extra trip to Costco sooner than you planned.
There is one bright spot in the Kirkland lineup, though. After customer backlash, Costco reportedly restored their Kirkland Signature Premium Paper Towels from 140 sheets back to 160 sheets per roll. That kind of reversal almost never happens, which tells you how loud the complaints must have been.
Big Brand Products on Costco Shelves Are Getting Smaller
It’s not just Costco’s in-house brand pulling this. Plenty of major names sold at Costco have been quietly trimming their products. Crest 3D White Advanced Toothpaste went from 6 ounces per tube to 5.2 ounces, roughly a seventh less product. A Reddit user noticed it because the new tubes “felt like they were filled with a bunch of air.” Same packaging. Less inside.
Scott Shop Towels lost about four square feet per roll, going from 43.6 square feet down to 39.5. Dixie Ultra plates went from 285 per pack to 240, a drop of 45 plates. Gillette Mach3 cartridge packs now include fewer refills. Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash bottles, sold in three-packs at Costco, went from 24 ounces to 23 ounces each.
Even snacks haven’t been spared. Kit Kat bars in bulk Costco boxes were caught being smaller than before. A Reddit user posted a photo comparison, noting the bars “felt weird in my hand.” Nestle’s director of corporate affairs actually confirmed that rising costs pushed the size reduction. At least someone was honest about it.
The Sneaky Products You Might Have Missed
Some of the shrinkage is harder to spot because the packaging barely changes. Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream Ultimate, sold in a two-pack, used to include two 20-ounce jars. Now, one jar is 20 ounces and the other is only 16 ounces. The two-pack still goes for $19.99. CeraVe moisturizing cream pulled a similar trick: their two-jar pack at Costco dropped from 539 grams per jar to 453 grams. The newer jar looks the same size on the outside but weighs significantly less.
Tide Pods have also been on a slow decline. One Reddit user shared photos of two bags, one at 36 ounces and a newer one at 34 ounces. Current online listings now show them at 32 ounces. Las Fortunitas Organic Flour Tortillas went from two packs of 20 to two packs of 19. Two fewer tortillas total for the same price. Even Windex Glass Cleaner shrunk, going from a combined 208 ounces of product to 201 ounces.
Why Shrinkflation Works (Even When We Hate It)
Here’s the frustrating part. Shrinkflation keeps happening because, on some level, it actually works. Cognitive researchers have a term for it: “unit bias.” People see an identical-looking package and assume it holds the same amount. One academic study found that after a product gets downsized, sales actually increase by 6%. That’s right. Companies make the product smaller and sell more of it, at least in the short term.
A 2025 GAO report found that shrinkflation’s impact on overall inflation numbers is small at the macro level, less than 0.1 percentage point. But in specific categories, the impact is real. Paper products saw a 3-percentage-point contribution from shrinkflation alone. Snacks saw 2.5 points. Those are the exact categories Costco shoppers buy in bulk, which makes the sting that much worse.
An expert quoted in one report put it plainly: “Businesses know that customers don’t like when prices go up. Shrinkflation is a sneaky little way around that.” The problem, they added, is that “when they do notice, it leaves the customer with a bad taste in their mouth because it feels so deceptive.”
Costco Shoppers Are Paying Attention
A Gartner poll found that 62% of consumers said they might stop buying a brand that practiced shrinkflation. But real brand-switching behavior has actually been falling. In other words, people say they’ll switch but mostly don’t. Meanwhile, 82% of American consumers say they’re concerned about shrinkflation, up from 73% the previous year. The frustration is clearly growing even if shopping habits haven’t fully caught up.
Costco members, though, tend to be more observant than the average grocery shopper. When you’re buying in bulk and paying an annual membership fee, you expect to get your money’s worth. That’s the whole deal. And when a pack of plates loses 45 units or a roll of toilet paper loses 45 sheets, people who shop at Costco specifically because they trust the value proposition are going to notice. And they’re going to be vocal about it.
What You Can Actually Do About It
The simplest defense against shrinkflation at Costco, or anywhere else, is checking the unit price. That little number on the shelf tag that shows you the price per ounce, per sheet, or per count. It’s the only honest number on the shelf because it accounts for both the price and the actual amount you’re getting. If a product shrank but the unit price went up, you know exactly what happened.
You can also keep old packaging around for a week or two when you open something new. Sounds weird, but those side-by-side comparisons are exactly how Reddit users have been catching these changes. And honestly, the social media pressure does seem to work sometimes. Costco reversed the paper towel shrinkage after enough people complained. Consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky, who has been tracking this kind of thing for decades through his site Consumer World, says the wave of shrinkflation that started around 2021 and 2022 was driven by record inflation hitting raw materials, ingredients, packaging, and shipping costs. Brands knew shoppers would notice a price hike but figured they wouldn’t notice a slightly lighter bag or a few fewer sheets on a roll.
They were wrong about that last part, at least when it comes to Costco members. And if the company keeps this up, it risks losing the one thing that keeps people renewing their memberships year after year: the belief that Costco is always on their side.
