Prices in United Kingdom 🇬🇧
In United Kingdom, mobile data costs $0.62, beer costs $1.17 and coca-cola costs $1.55. That is 15 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in GBP, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
The UK's prices sit between the eurozone and North America. Fuel duty plus VAT accounts for well over half the pump price, and most supermarket food is zero-rated for VAT, which is why the gap between British food and fuel prices is unusually wide. Zero-rating is not the same as exemption. It is a deliberate 0% band that still lets retailers reclaim VAT on their inputs, and it is one of the most generous food regimes in Europe against a fairly high 20% standard rate. Britain is the sharpest example in the table of a country that taxes driving heavily and eating barely at all.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $7.08 | 5.29 GBP | 24 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $1.55 | 1.25 GBP | 5 min |
| Cappuccino | $4.83 | 3.59 GBP | 16 min |
| Milk (1 litre) | $1.69 | 1.26 GBP | 6 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $4.12 | 3.06 GBP | 14 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $3.03 | 2.25 GBP | 10 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.97 | 1.46 GBP | 7 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $2.45 | 1.81 GBP | 8 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $43.00 | 31.8 GBP | 2.4 h |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $8.90 | 6.6 GBP | 30 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $17.21 | 13.4 GBP | 57 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.17 | 0.92 GBP | 4 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $24.77 | 19.29 GBP | 83 min |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | no data | ||
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $0.62 | — | 2 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $2.50 | 1.9 GBP | 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 United Kingdom compares
Relative to the rest of the game, United Kingdom is most expensive for electricity (100 kWh), where it ranks 2nd out of 48 countries at $43.00, against a global median of $20.65.
It is relatively cheapest for mobile data at $0.62, which is 26th of 49, only 23 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 2.4 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 United Kingdom: 20% VAT. Ordinary groceries: most supermarket food zero-rated. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
United Kingdom 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
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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.