Beer (330ml) prices by country
Beer (330ml) costs from $0.35 in Nigeria to $2.39 in Ireland, across 42 countries priced in US dollars and in local currency.
Beer is heavy, mostly water, and brewed close to where it is drunk, so a shop-bought bottle is a fairly clean read on local costs plus local excise duty. It is also the item where the shop and the bar diverge most: the same bottle carries a markup of three or four times once someone hands it to you across a counter, which is why this figure is the retail one.
The numbers
| Country | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | $0.35 | 550 NGN | 57 min |
| Czechia | $0.47 | 11.15 CZK | 3 min |
| Brazil | $0.49 | 2.79 BRL | 7 min |
| China | $0.54 | 3.89 CNY | 6 min |
| South Africa | $0.54 | 9.9 ZAR | 7 min |
| Vietnam | $0.57 | 13,750 VND | 12 min |
| Hungary | $0.58 | 210.54 HUF | 4 min |
| Romania | $0.62 | 2.83 RON | 5 min |
| Spain | $0.63 | 0.58 EUR | 3 min |
| Poland | $0.65 | 2.56 PLN | 5 min |
| Ghana | $0.67 | 10 GHS | 33 min |
| Colombia | $0.71 | 2,900 COP | 16 min |
| Tanzania | $0.74 | 2,000 TZS | 41 min |
| Chile | $0.75 | 721.29 CLP | 7 min |
| Philippines | $0.75 | 44 PHP | 22 min |
| Portugal | $0.86 | 0.79 EUR | 6 min |
| Egypt | $0.93 | 45 EGP | 31 min |
| Netherlands | $0.93 | 0.86 EUR | 3 min |
| Sweden | $0.97 | 10.36 SEK | 3 min |
| Uruguay | $0.99 | 39.79 UYU | 8 min |
| Peru | $1.00 | 3.71 PEN | 18 min |
| Mexico | $1.01 | 18.92 MXN | 15 min |
| Lebanon | $1.09 | 98,000 LBP | 20 min |
| New Zealand | $1.16 | 1.96 NZD | 3 min |
| United Kingdom | $1.17 | 0.92 GBP | 4 min |
| Australia | $1.27 | 1.96 AUD | 3 min |
| Italy | $1.31 | 1.21 EUR | 6 min |
| South Korea | $1.33 | 1,848 KRW | 6 min |
| Pakistan | $1.33 | 369.6 PKR | 2.7 h |
| Japan | $1.39 | 211.2 JPY | 5 min |
| Switzerland | $1.44 | 1.27 CHF | 3 min |
| Israel | $1.46 | 5.52 ILS | 4 min |
| Argentina | $1.50 | 1,395.35 ARS | 26 min |
| Thailand | $1.53 | 54.66 THB | 26 min |
| Canada | $1.59 | 2.19 CAD | 4 min |
| Germany | $1.62 | 1.5 EUR | 4 min |
| Costa Rica | $1.81 | 950 CRC | 17 min |
| Norway | $1.81 | 19.8 NOK | 4 min |
| Indonesia | $1.84 | 30,000 IDR | 50 min |
| France | $1.90 | 1.76 EUR | 6 min |
| Turkey | $2.36 | 78 TRY | 35 min |
| Ireland | $2.39 | 2.21 EUR | 7 min |
Source: The WHO Global Health Observatory's 2024 alcohol tax survey. Prices are collected for the most sold brand in each country and standardised to 330ml, in local currency and in US dollars. Full methodology.
What the spread shows
The cheapest beer in the game is in Nigeria at $0.35; the most expensive is in Ireland at $2.39. That is a 6.8× difference for the same thing, against a median of $1.00 across all 42 countries.
Ranking by earnings instead of dollars rearranges the table. Pakistan has the longest wait, about 2.7 hours of the average local wage, while in Switzerland it is roughly 3 minutes. A country can look cheap in dollars and expensive in hours at the same time, and for most people the hours are what actually matter.