About the Big Mac Index

What is the Big Mac Index?

The Big Mac Index was invented by The Economist in 1986 as a lighthearted guide to whether currencies are at their "correct" level. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalize the prices of an identical basket of goods and services (in this case, a Big Mac) in any two countries.

The burger was chosen because it is available in about 120 countries around the world. The Big Mac is a standardized product made in each country with similar ingredients, making it an ideal candidate for comparing prices across borders.

How Does It Work?

The Big Mac Index compares the price of McDonald's flagship burger across different countries. By converting local prices to US dollars at current exchange rates, we can see which currencies are overvalued or undervalued against the dollar.

About This Website

BigMacIndex.app is an independent project built on The Economist's official Big Mac Index. Burger prices come from their survey, which is published twice a year, and each edition carries the exchange rates of its own survey week. Turn on Live Rates and every dollar figure is recalculated against the current market rate instead, so you can see how much of a country's position is the burger and how much is the currency. The live rates come from an external FX API; the survey-week rates are The Economist's own. Where the two projects differ, and which one to use for which job, is set out in us versus The Economist.

Our goal is to make this data more accessible and interactive, allowing users to:

• Compare prices across multiple countries
• View historical price trends
• Change the base country for comparisons
• Download data for research purposes

About Robert. W

Robert. W — Independent Developer & Editor · Australia

Hi, I'm Robert — an indie developer based in Australia. BigMacIndex.app is a side project I started in early 2026 to make purchasing power parity feel less abstract. I track Big Mac prices across 60+ countries and write short, footnoted explainers about what the numbers actually mean.

I'm not an economist by training. My background is in software — I've been shipping small data-driven web products solo for several years, and most of what you read on this site comes from one habit: pulling raw numbers myself, then explaining the result in language that non-economist friends will actually read.

I update the dataset roughly monthly. I don't consult, don't take sponsored placements, and link every chart on the site to the underlying data. If you spot a mistake, please drop me a line — corrections are credited inline.

Limitations

While the Big Mac Index is a useful tool, it has several limitations:

• Big Macs may not be perfectly comparable across countries due to local tastes and ingredients
• The index doesn't account for differences in labor costs, taxes, or profit margins
• McDonald's pricing strategies may vary by market
• Some countries don't have McDonald's restaurants

The index should be seen as a fun and accessible way to understand exchange rate theory, not as a definitive measure of currency valuation.

Data Sources

• Big Mac Prices: The Economist, published twice a year
• Survey-week Exchange Rates: supplied with each Economist edition (Refinitiv / Tokyo midday), fixed for that edition
• Live Exchange Rates: an external FX API, used only while the Live Rates toggle is on
• Historical Data: TheEconomist/big-mac-data on GitHub (MIT)

Methodology

The short version: Big Mac local prices come from The Economist's published index, which is released twice a year and is the only source in which every country is priced on the same date. Where the Economist does not break a country out — most of the euro area — I research the price myself and publish it as a separate editorial tier with its own confidence score and source list, and countries with no McDonald's at all are kept as a closed tier with no price rather than a fabricated one. Every figure on the site is tagged with which of those it came from, shown as a coloured dot next to the number:

• Economist · Verified — the original number from The Economist's published Big Mac Index. Highest confidence.
• Editorial · High confidence — researched by us; multiple independent sources agree within 15%.
• Editorial · Researched — researched by us; one or two sources, recent enough to publish.
• Editorial · Tentative — single source or older than 12 months. Use with caution.
• Community · Verified / Unverified — reader-submitted prices, with verification status shown.
• No data yet — the country shows on the map in grey. Help us fill it in.

That is the summary. The full methodology page is the authoritative version: the calculation with a worked example, what each tier can and cannot be used for, the exact points that add up to a confidence score, how reader-submitted prices are handled, and the origin and retrieval date of the underlying Economist dataset.

Corrections are welcome and are credited inline on the country page. Email [email protected] with a receipt photo or a link to your local McDonald's menu, or comment on the country data-gathering threads I post in local subreddits — the contact page lists exactly what to include so a report can be verified without a round of follow-up questions.

Calculation Method

For each country, we calculate:

Example (Japan):

• Local Price: ¥500
• Exchange Rate: ¥162.13/$
• USD Price: ¥500 ÷ 162.13 = $3.08
• US Price: $6.22
• Implied PPP: ¥500 ÷ $6.22 = ¥80.39/$
• Valuation: (80.39 − 162.13) ÷ 162.13 = -50.4% (undervalued)

Those are the current figures, pulled from the dataset when this page was built. The full methodology page works the same calculation through the euro area and explains what each source tier can be used for. To watch it move instead of reading it, the calculator opens preset to this example — $100 from the United States to Japan — and re-runs these three formulas against any other pair.

Update Frequency

Support this project

BigMacIndex.app runs on weekends and curiosity. If the site has been useful — for travel planning, currency research, or just settling an argument — a coffee goes a long way.

Buy me a coffee

Or — equally valuable — send a correction, share the site with someone who'd find it interesting, or open an issue on GitHub.

Academic References

• Pakko, M. R., & Pollard, P. S. (2003). "Burgernomics: A Big Mac Guide to Purchasing Power Parity." Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review.
• Clements, K. W., Lan, Y., & Seah, S. P. (2012). "The Big Mac Index Two Decades On." Economics Letters.

"The Big Mac Index was never intended to be a precise gauge of currency misalignment, merely a tool to make exchange-rate theory more digestible." — The Economist