Pricele

Prices in Romania 🇷🇴

In Romania, mobile data costs $0.54, beer costs $0.62 and vape liquid costs $1.81. That is 9 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in RON, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.

Romania raised its standard VAT from 19% to 21% in 2025 to close a budget deficit, making it one of the few countries in Europe to put its rate up rather than down in recent years. Most food sits at a reduced 11%, but the relief stops at alcohol and at food with added sugar above a threshold, so the beer and spirits rows carry the full rate. Wages have risen quickly from a low base and are still below the EU average, which is why Romania often looks cheap in dollars and much less so in work time.

What things cost

ItemUSDLocalWork time
Big Mac$3.9817.45 RON30 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)no data
Diesel (1 litre)$2.2610.24 RON17 min
Electricity (100 kWh)$34.80157.6 RON4.4 h
Natural gas (100 kWh)no data
Cigarettes (20-pack)$5.9827.5 RON46 min
Beer (330ml)$0.622.83 RON5 min
Spirits (750ml bottle)$9.8645.29 RON75 min
Vape e-liquid (1 ml)$1.818.33 RON14 min
Mobile data (1 GB)$0.54—4 min
A day's healthy diet$2.029.04 RON15 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 Romania compares

Relative to the rest of the game, Romania is most expensive for electricity (100 kWh), where it ranks 7th out of 48 countries at $34.80, against a global median of $20.65.

It is relatively cheapest for beer at $0.62, which is 35th of 42, only 7 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 4.4 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 Romania: 21% TVA. Ordinary groceries: 11% on most food, but not alcohol or high-sugar food. Where these come from.

Play a puzzle

Romania 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

Why a country's prices look the way they do

Romania prices: common questions

How much do everyday things cost in Romania?
Pricele publishes 9 everyday prices for Romania, each from a named source. Mobile data $0.54, Beer $0.62, Vape liquid $1.81. 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 Romania?
Romania uses the RON. 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 Romania list?
Of the 9 items priced for Romania, the cheapest is Mobile data at $0.54 and the most expensive is Electricity (100 kWh) at $34.80. That is a comparison within one country's list, not a claim about value for money.
Where do Pricele's Romania 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, 17-Aug-2026, GlobalPetrolPrices.com, December 2025, WHO Global Health Observatory, tobacco tax survey 2024 (most sold brand), WHO Global Health Observatory, alcohol 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 Romania.