Cigarettes (20-pack) prices by country
Cigarettes (20-pack) costs from $0.50 in Nigeria to $24.38 in Australia, across 49 countries priced in US dollars and in local currency.
No other item in the game is this deliberately priced. Tobacco taxes are set to make cigarettes unaffordable, and the WHO tracks the result precisely because it is a policy instrument rather than a market outcome. Australia's pack costs more than thirty times Lebanon's, and the same manufacturers sell in both.
The numbers
| Country | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | $0.50 | 800 NGN | 81 min |
| Lebanon | $0.76 | 68,250 LBP | 14 min |
| Egypt | $0.82 | 40 EGP | 27 min |
| Pakistan | $0.83 | 230 PKR | 1.7 h |
| Vietnam | $0.87 | 21,115 VND | 19 min |
| Bangladesh | $0.88 | 104 BDT | 83 min |
| Brazil | $1.50 | 8.5 BRL | 20 min |
| Tanzania | $1.64 | 4,400 TZS | 1.5 h |
| Ghana | $1.74 | 26 GHS | 86 min |
| Thailand | $1.96 | 70 THB | 34 min |
| Colombia | $2.09 | 8,534 COP | 47 min |
| Turkey | $2.21 | 73 TRY | 33 min |
| India | $2.27 | 190 INR | 54 min |
| Indonesia | $2.45 | 40,000 IDR | 67 min |
| China | $2.49 | 17.99 CNY | 27 min |
| South Africa | $2.62 | 47.7 ZAR | 35 min |
| Philippines | $2.66 | 156 PHP | 79 min |
| Argentina | $3.13 | 2,910 ARS | 54 min |
| South Korea | $3.25 | 4,500 KRW | 14 min |
| Malaysia | $3.84 | 17.7 MYR | 60 min |
| Chile | $3.92 | 3,750 CLP | 38 min |
| Japan | $3.94 | 600 JPY | 15 min |
| Mexico | $4.28 | 79.98 MXN | 64 min |
| Peru | $4.38 | 16.3 PEN | 79 min |
| Costa Rica | $4.58 | 2,400 CRC | 43 min |
| Poland | $4.91 | 19.5 PLN | 37 min |
| Uruguay | $5.21 | 210 UYU | 41 min |
| Portugal | $5.52 | 5.1 EUR | 37 min |
| Romania | $5.98 | 27.5 RON | 46 min |
| United Arab Emirates | $5.99 | 22 AED | 24 min |
| Spain | $6.06 | 5.6 EUR | 30 min |
| Hungary | $6.29 | 2,300 HUF | 44 min |
| Czechia | $6.30 | 148 CZK | 35 min |
| Italy | $6.71 | 6.2 EUR | 29 min |
| Sweden | $7.27 | 78 SEK | 21 min |
| Saudi Arabia | $7.47 | 28 SAR | 37 min |
| United States | $8.91 | 8.91 USD | 21 min |
| Germany | $9.42 | 8.7 EUR | 26 min |
| Canada | $9.95 | 13.74 CAD | 27 min |
| Israel | $10.35 | 39 ILS | 30 min |
| Switzerland | $10.44 | 9.2 CHF | 18 min |
| Singapore | $11.61 | 15.6 SGD | 44 min |
| France | $13.54 | 12.5 EUR | 45 min |
| Netherlands | $13.54 | 12.5 EUR | 41 min |
| Norway | $15.31 | 167 NOK | 32 min |
| United Kingdom | $17.21 | 13.4 GBP | 57 min |
| Ireland | $18.46 | 17.05 EUR | 55 min |
| New Zealand | $22.75 | 38.5 NZD | 62 min |
| Australia | $24.38 | 37.56 AUD | 56 min |
Source: The WHO Global Health Observatory's 2024 tobacco tax survey, which records the retail price of the most sold brand in each country, in local currency and in US dollars at the official exchange rate. Full methodology.
What the spread shows
The cheapest cigarettes in the game is in Nigeria at $0.50; the most expensive is in Australia at $24.38. That is a 48.8× difference for the same thing, against a median of $4.58 across all 49 countries.
Ranking by earnings instead of dollars rearranges the table. Pakistan has the longest wait, about 1.7 hours of the average local wage, while in South Korea it is roughly 14 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.