Prices in Sweden 🇸🇪
In Sweden, beer costs $0.97, milk costs $1.71 and coca-cola costs $1.76. That is 16 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in SEK, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
Sweden has high fuel taxes and high wages, a combination that puts it near the top of the table in dollar terms and much nearer the middle once measured in work time. Groceries are cheaper than in Norway, since Sweden's agricultural protection is lighter. Food is taxed at 12% against a 25% standard rate, so the Swedish food carve-out is real but less generous than the southern European ones. Sweden and Norway make the most informative Nordic pair in this table: comparable wages and climates, meaningfully different agricultural and fuel policies, and a visible price gap that follows from them.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $7.26 | 67 SEK | 21 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $1.76 | 18.9 SEK | 5 min |
| Cappuccino | $4.86 | 46.34 SEK | 14 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.71 | 16.3 SEK | 5 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $4.37 | 41.67 SEK | 12 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $3.23 | 30.8 SEK | 9 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.88 | 17.92 SEK | 5 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $2.11 | 20.14 SEK | 6 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $26.30 | 251 SEK | 75 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $22.40 | 214 SEK | 64 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $7.27 | 78 SEK | 21 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $0.97 | 10.36 SEK | 3 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $21.38 | 229.29 SEK | 61 min |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $3.22 | 34.5 SEK | 9 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $2.33 | — | 7 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $3.72 | 36.55 SEK | 11 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 Sweden compares
Relative to the rest of the game, Sweden is most expensive for natural gas (100 kWh), where it ranks 1st out of 31 countries at $22.40, against a global median of $9.80.
It is relatively cheapest for beer at $0.97, which is 24th of 42, 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 electricity (100 kWh), at roughly 75 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 Sweden: 25% moms. Ordinary groceries: 12% on food. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
Sweden 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.