In development · Waitlist open

Big Mac Index REST API

Programmatic access to Big Mac prices, exchange rates, and purchasing power parity data across 50+ countries, with daily-refreshed live FX. Free tier planned. CSV and JSON downloads available now — see /data.

What you'll get

Live + historical data — current snapshot plus full series back to 2000
All Economist-tracked countries (54) plus our editorial-tier additions (Germany city-level today, eurozone disaggregation rolling out)
Multiple base currencies — USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CNY raw + GDP-adjusted
Source transparency per country — each price tagged with source_tier (economist | editorial | community) and a confidence score
Free tier — generous request limit for non-commercial use
Open license — data under CC-BY 4.0, code samples MIT

Endpoints (planned)

Provisional REST shape — feedback welcome before launch.

GET  /api/v1/countries
GET  /api/v1/countries/{iso}
GET  /api/v1/index/latest
GET  /api/v1/index/latest?base=EUR
GET  /api/v1/index/history?iso=DEU&from=2020&to=2026
GET  /api/v1/calculator?from=USD&to=JPY&amount=100
GET  /api/v1/sources/{iso}     # what we sourced + confidence

Response shape (example):

{
  "iso_a3": "DEU",
  "name": "Germany",
  "currency": "EUR",
  "local_price": 6.30,
  "dollar_ex": 0.8621,
  "price_usd": 7.31,
  "diff_percent_vs_usa": 26.3,
  "source_tier": "editorial",
  "confidence": 0.82,
  "last_reviewed_at": "2026-05-18",
  "sources": [ /* URLs + accessed dates */ ]
}

Who this is for

Developers building travel apps, currency converters, fintech tools
Researchers doing PPP / cost-of-living / inflation comparison work
Journalists needing fact-checked Big Mac data for stories
Indie hackers shipping side projects with currency components

Pricing

Free tier — generous limit (target: ≥10k requests/month) for non-commercial use, with API key
Paid tiers — TBD; commercial usage + higher rate limits

Pricing is open to feedback. If you have a specific need or volume requirement, tell us on the waitlist signup.

Join the waitlist

The API ships in Q3 2026. To get notified — and to influence the endpoint shape before lock-in — email:

[email protected]

Subject line "API waitlist" + 1-2 lines on what you'd use it for. We'll prioritise endpoint design around real use cases.

Available right now

While the API is in development, you can already use:

Full CSV download — entire history 2000-2026 (19 columns, all countries)
Latest snapshot JSON — current period (14 KB)
Full history JSON — time series (289 KB)
Country metadata JSON — ISO codes, regions, currency symbols

All under CC-BY 4.0. The API just adds live + parametric access; the data itself is the same source.

Why we're building this

The Big Mac Index has been published twice a year by The Economist since 1986, as a CSV on a static URL. Useful, but not programmatic. Commercial financial APIs (Reuters, Bloomberg) lock currency PPP data behind enterprise pricing. There's no free, well-documented, REST API for this in 2026 — so we're shipping one.

For background on our methodology and how we differ from delivery-platform-scraped sites (in-store prices, not delivery markup), see the methodology page.

Made by Robert. W