A shopping list is a list of items needed to be purchased by a shopper. Consumers often compile a shopping list of groceries to purchase on the next visit to the grocery store (a grocery list). The shopping list was known 2000 years B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia. There are surviving examples of Roman and Biblical shopping lists.

The shopping list itself may be simply a scrap piece of paper or something more elaborate. There are pads with magnets for keeping an incremental list available at the home, typically on the refrigerator, but any magnetic clip with scraps of paper can be used to achieve the same result. There is even a specific device that dispenses a strip of paper from a roll for use in a shopping list. Some shopping carts come with a small clipboard to fit shopping lists on.