Red onion prices

Red onions are grown alongside yellow in most of the same storage and summer districts, but on a smaller planted base, and are distinguished commercially by their purple-red skin and a milder flavor suited to raw and fresh preparations rather than long cooking. They follow the same origin rotation as yellow: storage-crop districts carry the fall and winter supply, and the summer desert and California districts fill the warmer months.

Pack is where red parts company with the rest of the market. The red series USDA quotes most often at the storage origins run in 25-lb sacks, while yellow's benchmark is the 50-lb sack, so a red FOB and a yellow FOB out of the same district are not comparable until both are put on a per-pound basis. Every line on the chart above names its pack for that reason. Red also shows up in 40-lb cartons where a buyer wants the box.

Because the red crop is smaller than yellow's, its price does not always move in step. A shortfall in one district's red acreage can tighten red supply while yellow out of that same district stays ample, so red is the variety most likely to show a move the yellow chart does not explain. A thinner market also means fewer confirmed sales sit behind each USDA quote, so a red FOB range can be wider than yellow's and can step further between report days. Demand pulls on a different rhythm too: red leans on salads, sandwiches, salsa and the rest of the fresh-prep trade, which holds through summer, while the pungent cooking demand that carries yellow is strongest in cold weather.

That different rhythm is measurable here, and it is the clearest reason to read this page rather than the yellow one. Across the USDA quotes published on this site since 2021 for the benchmark red jumbo in 25-lb sacks, the softest months are September, October and November, and the firmest are April, May and June. Red's high therefore arrives roughly a quarter of the year after yellow's late-winter peak, which lines up with the cold-prep demand that carries it. The published quote range on that spec ran $7.00 to $17.00 in 2021, $8.00 to $30.00 in 2022, $5.00 to $15.00 in 2023, $12.00 to $30.00 in 2024, $6.00 to $14.00 in 2025 and $5.50 to $18.00 so far in 2026.

Seven origins have quoted red on this site since the start of 2024. Washington and Idaho-Eastern Oregon lead on quote days, then California and New Mexico, with New York, the Mexican crossings and Texas filling their own windows. In a normal month only two to six of them are quoting at once, against four to eight for yellow, so the chart above carries fewer lines and one district's short crop shows through faster.

Per pound, red is the most expensive of the three cooking onions this site tracks. Comparing quotes from the same district on the same day at the same size since the start of 2024, red priced above yellow in every one of more than 3,300 matched pairs, at roughly twice the price per pound, and above white in about seven of every ten pairs. The 25-lb pack is why the shipping-point line does not look like that at a glance: a smaller sack at a higher price per pound still prints a smaller number than a 50-lb sack of yellow.