Prices in New Zealand 🇳🇿
In New Zealand, beer costs $1.16, diesel costs $1.59 and gasoline costs $1.75. That is 16 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in NZD, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
New Zealand exports most of what it farms, so domestic dairy prices track world markets rather than local production costs, which is why milk is not as cheap as a country of that many cows might suggest. Groceries generally run above Australian levels. Its GST is the purest in the table: 15% on essentially everything, with no food exemption at all, a design economists often hold up as the textbook version of a consumption tax. Comparing New Zealand with Australia is therefore unusually clean: similar economies and supply chains, but one exempts basic food from GST and the other does not.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $4.94 | 8.6 NZD | 13 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $2.22 | 3.8 NZD | 6 min |
| Cappuccino | $3.45 | 5.87 NZD | 9 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.85 | 3.15 NZD | 5 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $6.31 | 10.74 NZD | 17 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $2.87 | 4.88 NZD | 8 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.75 | 2.98 NZD | 5 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.59 | 2.71 NZD | 4 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $22.30 | 38 NZD | 61 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $9.80 | 16.7 NZD | 27 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $22.75 | 38.5 NZD | 62 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.16 | 1.96 NZD | 3 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $69.64 | 117.85 NZD | 3.2 h |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $12.66 | 21.43 NZD | 35 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $5.89 | — | 16 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $3.24 | 5.58 NZD | 9 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 New Zealand compares
Relative to the rest of the game, New Zealand is most expensive for spirits, where it ranks 1st out of 42 countries at $69.64, against a global median of $12.48.
It is relatively cheapest for big mac at $4.94, which is 31st of 45, only 14 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 3.2 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 New Zealand: 15% GST. Ordinary groceries: no food exemption; GST applies to groceries. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
New Zealand 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
- Australia
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Czechia
- Egypt
- France
- Germany
- Ghana
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Lebanon
- Malaysia
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- Nigeria
- Norway
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- 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.