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Prices in Moldova 🇲🇩

In Moldova, mobile data costs $0.28, gasoline costs $1.86 and healthy diet costs $1.92. That is 8 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in MDL, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe by income, with hourly earnings closer to Latin America's than to its neighbour Romania's, and remittances from Moldovans working abroad are a large part of household income. It imports almost all of its energy and has spent the years since 2022 reducing its dependence on Russian gas, buying through Romania and the EU instead, a shift that raised household energy bills sharply. VAT is 20%, with some foods at a reduced rate. The leu floats, so dollar prices move with it, and the Big Mac row is one of the few in the index from this part of Europe.

What things cost

ItemUSDWork time
Big Mac$4.0970 MDL82 min
Coca-Cola (330ml can)no data
Cappuccinono data
Milk (1 litre)no data
Eggs (dozen)no data
Apples (1 kg)no data
Gasoline (1 litre)$1.8633.21 MDL37 min
Diesel (1 litre)$1.9935.56 MDL40 min
Electricity (100 kWh)$20.10359 MDL6.7 h
Natural gas (100 kWh)no data
Cigarettes (20-pack)$2.8250 MDL56 min
Beer (330ml)no data
Spirits (750ml bottle)no data
Vape e-liquid (1 ml)$4.2375 MDL85 min
Mobile data (1 GB)$0.286 min
A day's healthy diet$1.9233.43 MDL38 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 Moldova compares

Relative to the rest of the game, Moldova is most expensive for vape liquid, where it ranks 6th out of 26 countries at $4.23, against a global median of $3.22.

It is relatively cheapest for mobile data at $0.28, which is 51st of 61, only 10 countries in the game are cheaper.

Measured against local earnings rather than dollars, the item that takes the longest to afford here is electricity (100 kWh), at roughly 6.7 hours 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 Moldova: 20% TVA. Where these come from.

Play a puzzle

Moldova comes up in the daily puzzle roughly once every 61 days, paired with a different item each time. Play today's puzzle or browse the archive of past rounds.

Other countries

Why a country's prices look the way they do

Moldova prices: common questions

How much do everyday things cost in Moldova?
Pricele publishes 8 everyday prices for Moldova, each from a named source. Mobile data $0.28, Gasoline $1.86, Healthy diet $1.92. All figures are converted to US dollars so countries can be compared directly; the local-currency figure is shown alongside wherever the source published one.
What currency is used in Moldova?
Moldova uses the MDL. Pricele lists every price in US dollars for comparability, and shows the published local-currency figure next to it where the source gives one rather than back-converting from the dollar price.
What is the cheapest thing on Pricele's Moldova list?
Of the 8 items priced for Moldova, the cheapest is Mobile data at $0.28 and the most expensive is Electricity (100 kWh) at $20.10. That is a comparison within one country's list, not a claim about value for money.
Where do Pricele's Moldova prices come from?
Every row names its source and the date it was collected. They come from The Economist Big Mac Index, Jan 2026, GlobalPetrolPrices.com, 19-Oct-2026, GlobalPetrolPrices.com, March 2026, WHO Global Health Observatory, tobacco tax survey 2024 (most sold brand), WHO Global Health Observatory, tobacco tax survey 2024 (cheapest disposable device), Cable.co.uk worldwide mobile data pricing, 2023 and World Bank Food Prices for Nutrition, 2025 (converted at the World Bank official exchange rate). A pair only exists where there is a real sourced number: the table is deliberately sparse rather than padded with estimates, so a missing item usually means the item is not sold that way in Moldova.