Prices in Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦
In Saudi Arabia, diesel costs $0.48, gasoline costs $0.62 and coca-cola costs $0.80. That is 13 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in SAR, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
Saudi Arabia has some of the cheapest fuel in the game, with domestic petrol priced well below world markets, though the kingdom has raised it repeatedly since 2016 as part of budget reform. Food is largely imported and priced closer to global levels. VAT was introduced in 2018 and tripled to 15% in 2020, with no reduced rate for food, so Saudi groceries now carry a heavier tax load than groceries in most of Europe. The kingdom is a useful reminder that a country can subsidise one item heavily and tax the rest at a high flat rate at the same time.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $5.07 | 19 SAR | 25 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $0.80 | 3 SAR | 4 min |
| Cappuccino | $3.70 | 13.88 SAR | 19 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.71 | 6.41 SAR | 9 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $2.57 | 9.64 SAR | 13 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $2.22 | 8.33 SAR | 11 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $0.62 | 2.33 SAR | 3 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $0.48 | 1.79 SAR | 2 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $5.30 | 20 SAR | 27 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | no data | ||
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $7.47 | 28 SAR | 37 min |
| Beer (330ml) | no data | ||
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | no data | ||
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $1.02 | 3.83 SAR | 5 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $1.49 | — | 7 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $1.53 | 5.75 SAR | 8 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 Saudi Arabia compares
Relative to the rest of the game, Saudi Arabia is most expensive for milk, where it ranks 12th out of 32 countries at $1.71, against a global median of $1.54.
It is relatively cheapest for diesel at $0.48, which is 48th of 49, only 1 countries in the game are cheaper.
Measured against local earnings rather than dollars, the item that takes the longest to afford here is cigarettes, at roughly 37 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 Saudi Arabia: 15% VAT. Ordinary groceries: no reduced rate for food. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
Saudi Arabia 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.
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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.