Prices in Australia 🇦🇺
In Australia, mobile data costs $0.44, beer costs $1.27 and gasoline costs $1.28. That is 15 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in AUD, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
Australia combines high wages with high retail costs and long domestic supply lines. Groceries are concentrated between two supermarket chains, which the country's competition regulator has repeatedly examined, and fuel carries an excise that puts it above US levels but well below European ones. The GST is a flat 10% and most basic food is GST-free, so the tax explanation for expensive Australian groceries is weaker than it looks: what you are paying for is distance and wages, not tax. That distinction shows up clearly in the work-time column, where Australia looks far more ordinary than its dollar prices suggest.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $5.69 | 8.5 AUD | 13 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $2.21 | 3.5 AUD | 5 min |
| Cappuccino | $3.95 | 5.63 AUD | 9 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.76 | 2.51 AUD | 4 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $5.04 | 7.18 AUD | 12 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $3.69 | 5.26 AUD | 9 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.28 | 1.82 AUD | 3 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.64 | 2.32 AUD | 4 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $28.30 | 40 AUD | 65 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $11.00 | 15.5 AUD | 25 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $24.38 | 37.56 AUD | 56 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.27 | 1.96 AUD | 3 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $34.77 | 53.57 AUD | 80 min |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | no data | ||
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $0.44 | — | 1 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $3.07 | 4.76 AUD | 7 min |
Most local-currency figures are printed as the source published them. The cappuccino, milk, egg, apple and petrol rows are converted from US dollars at recent exchange rates; the healthy-diet row is converted the other way. A dash means the source publishes dollars and nothing else. Work time divides the dollar price by an estimated average hourly wage, the roughest number on this page. See methodology.
How Australia compares
Relative to the rest of the game, Australia is most expensive for cigarettes, where it ranks 1st out of 49 countries at $24.38, against a global median of $4.58.
It is relatively cheapest for mobile data at $0.44, which is 31st of 49, only 18 countries in the game are cheaper.
Measured against local earnings rather than dollars, the item that takes the longest to afford here is spirits, at roughly 80 minutes of the average wage. Dollar prices and work-time prices often rank countries very differently, and that gap is usually the more interesting number.
What the state takes
Standard rate in Australia: 10% GST. Ordinary groceries: most basic food is GST-free. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
Australia comes up in the daily puzzle roughly once every 49 days, paired with a different item each time. Play today's puzzle or browse the archive of past rounds.
Other countries
- Argentina
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- Italy
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- Netherlands
- New Zealand
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- Philippines
- Poland
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- Saudi Arabia
- Singapore
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Tanzania
- Thailand
- Turkey
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Uruguay
- Vietnam
Why a country's prices look the way they do
- Why poor countries are cheap, and why it is not what you thinkThe real answer has nothing to do with profits or standards. It is a sixty-year-old piece of economics about haircuts, and it explains most of the price map.
- A fifth of what you paid was tax, and you never saw the lineConsumption tax is the largest single wedge between two countries' prices for an identical product, and the one shoppers are least able to see.
- The salary comparison you keep seeing online is wrongConverting a wage at the market exchange rate answers a question nobody asked. Purchasing power parity answers the one you meant, and has its own traps.
- How to compare two countries without fooling yourselfCost-of-living comparisons go wrong in the same six ways every time. What follows is a method that survives contact with a real decision.