Pricele #33: Cappuccino in Switzerland 🇨🇭
The puzzle for 2 August 2026 asked what a cappuccino costs in Switzerland. Here is the answer and the context behind it.
The answer
Cappuccino · Switzerland
$6.31
5.1 CHF
About 11 minutes of the average local wage buys a cappuccino.
That makes it the most expensive cappuccino of all 32 countries in the game.
Source: Numbeo (crowd-sourced), retrieved 2026-08.
About cappuccino
A cappuccino is priced almost entirely by what surrounds it. Coffee beans are a global commodity that costs roughly the same everywhere, so nearly all of the difference between a $1.50 cup and a $6.50 cup is local rent, wages and what the market will bear. That makes it one of the sharpest signals of local cost of living in the game.
Where Switzerland sits
Of the 32 countries priced for cappuccino, Switzerland ranks #1 from the top at $6.31, 1.7× the median of $3.67.
Switzerland is the most expensive country in the game for almost every item, and the Big Mac Index has used it as the standing example of an overvalued currency for years. High wages are the main cause, and Swiss prices look far less extreme once you divide by what people earn. It is also, strikingly, a low-tax country on consumption: VAT is 8.1%, among the lowest in Europe, and food is charged at just 2.6%. Switzerland is therefore the cleanest disproof in this table of the idea that expensive countries are expensive because of tax. Almost none of the Swiss premium is collected by the state.
| Nearby on the cappuccino table | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Arab Emirates | $5.47 | 20.09 AED | 22 min |
| Norway | $5.57 | 52.86 NOK | 12 min |
| Switzerland | $6.31 | 5.1 CHF | 11 min |
What else costs what in Switzerland
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $9.08 | 7.3 CHF | 16 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $2.46 | 2.2 CHF | 4 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $2.25 | 1.82 CHF | 4 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $7.68 | 6.21 CHF | 14 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $3.72 | 3.01 CHF | 7 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $2.28 | 1.84 CHF | 4 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $2.72 | 2.21 CHF | 5 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $38.20 | 31 CHF | 67 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $18.10 | 14.7 CHF | 32 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $10.44 | 9.2 CHF | 18 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.44 | 1.27 CHF | 3 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $24.20 | 21.32 CHF | 43 min |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $2.38 | 2.1 CHF | 4 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $7.29 | — | 13 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $4.19 | 3.48 CHF | 7 min |
Go deeper
See the full table for cappuccino in every country or everything priced in Switzerland.