Prices in Uruguay 🇺🇾
In Uruguay, mobile data costs $0.28, beer costs $0.99 and diesel costs $1.46. That is 8 of the 16 everyday items in the game, priced in US dollars, in UYU, and as roughly how long someone on the average local wage works to buy one.
Uruguay is small, high-income by South American standards, and expensive in a way that surprises people who expect it to price like its neighbours. Part of that is a market of three and a half million people; part is a 22% IVA, the highest standard rate in the Americas. Food drops to 10% and milk is exempt outright, so the tax wedge on a grocery basket is narrower than the headline suggests. Beef is the exception that proves the rule: Uruguay exports a great deal of it, and it is priced for a local buyer accordingly.
What things cost
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $8.76 | 339 UYU | 69 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | no data | ||
| Cappuccino | no data | ||
| Milk (1 litre) | no data | ||
| Eggs (dozen) | no data | ||
| Apples (1 kg) | no data | ||
| Gasoline (1 litre) | no data | ||
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.46 | 58.68 UYU | 11 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $25.80 | 1,034.7 UYU | 3.4 h |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | no data | ||
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $5.21 | 210 UYU | 41 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $0.99 | 39.79 UYU | 8 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $12.09 | 486.75 UYU | 1.6 h |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | no data | ||
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $0.28 | — | 2 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $3.29 | 135.52 UYU | 26 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 Uruguay compares
Relative to the rest of the game, Uruguay is most expensive for big mac, where it ranks 2nd out of 45 countries at $8.76, against a global median of $5.53.
It is relatively cheapest for mobile data at $0.28, which is 42nd of 49, 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 3.4 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 Uruguay: 22% IVA. Ordinary groceries: 10% on food, milk exempt. Where these come from.
Play a puzzle
Uruguay 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
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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.