Big Mac Index 2026: The Complete Country-by-Country Breakdown
I’ve been tracking Big Mac prices across 54 countries this year, pulling The Economist’s raw CSV into a project I run on the side called bigmacindex.app. The dataset I’m working from is the January 2026 release of the Big Mac Index, the same index The Economist has published since 1986 as a lighthearted way to test whether currencies sit at their “correct” level against the US dollar.
The original framing was simple: if a burger is identical everywhere, the cost of that burger in two countries — converted at market exchange rates — should be roughly the same. When it isn’t, the cheaper currency is undervalued, and the dearer one is overvalued. That’s the textbook version of purchasing power parity (PPP), reduced to one menu item.
After tracking these numbers monthly, I can say the burger is far from a perfect yardstick. But it’s the most accessible PPP proxy that exists, and the country-level picture in 2026 is genuinely interesting. So here is the full breakdown, region by region, drawn from the January 2026 dataset.
All prices below are from The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026. The US benchmark is USD 5.79. Any country with a positive diff_percent is more expensive than the US (currency overvalued vs. USD on PPP terms); any negative number is cheaper (currency undervalued).
The Top 10 Most and Least Expensive Big Macs
Before diving by region, here is the headline table. As of January 2026, the ten priciest and ten cheapest burgers in the dataset look like this:
| Rank | Country | Local Price | USD Equivalent | vs. USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | CHF 7.20 | $7.99 | +38.0% |
| 2 | Argentina | ARS 7,300 | $6.95 | +20.1% |
| 3 | Uruguay | UYU 299 | $6.91 | +19.3% |
| 4 | Norway | NOK 75 | $6.67 | +15.3% |
| 5 | Euro area | EUR 5.67 | $5.95 | +2.8% |
| 6 | Costa Rica | CRC 2,990 | $5.90 | +1.9% |
| 7 | United States | USD 5.79 | $5.79 | 0.0% |
| 8 | Britain | GBP 4.59 | $5.73 | -1.1% |
| 9 | Sweden | SEK 62.00 | $5.67 | -2.1% |
| 10 | Denmark | DKK 39.00 | $5.49 | -5.2% |
And the ten cheapest:
| Rank | Country | Local Price | USD Equivalent | vs. USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 54 | Taiwan | NT$ 78 | $2.38 | -58.8% |
| 53 | Indonesia | IDR 41,000 | $2.54 | -56.2% |
| 52 | India | INR 226 | $2.62 | -54.8% |
| 51 | Egypt | EGP 135 | $2.69 | -53.6% |
| 50 | South Africa | ZAR 51.90 | $2.78 | -52.0% |
| 49 | Ukraine | UAH 120 | $2.86 | -50.7% |
| 48 | Philippines | PHP 169 | $2.89 | -50.1% |
| 47 | Malaysia | MYR 13.15 | $3.00 | -48.1% |
| 46 | Vietnam | VND 76,000 | $3.03 | -47.7% |
| 45 | Hong Kong | HKD 24.00 | $3.08 | -46.8% |
The full 54-country list lives on the site; what follows is a region-by-region read of what jumps out.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Americas: The Widest Spread in the Dataset
Of all six regions, the Americas have the most violent dispersion. The dollar-equivalent price of a Big Mac runs from USD 6.95 in Argentina down to USD 4.03 in Brazil, with the United States itself sitting near the top end at USD 5.79.
A few standouts:
- Argentina (ARS 7,300, USD 6.95, +20.1%) — Argentina is the only country in the Americas with a Big Mac more expensive than the United States in USD terms. The arithmetic looks straightforward: at an official exchange rate of ARS 1,050 per USD, the local burger converts to $6.95. The real story is messier — see my write-up on PPP limits — but on the published numbers, Buenos Aires is dearer than New York.
- Uruguay (UYU 299, USD 6.91, +19.3%) — Uruguay routinely lands in the top five of the index. The peso has been remarkably stable, local wages are high by Latin American standards, and beef inputs are domestic. Result: a burger that costs almost as much as the Swiss one.
- Costa Rica (CRC 2,990, USD 5.90, +1.9%) — Costa Rica is the quiet outlier. Its Big Mac sits essentially at parity with the United States — the closest in the Americas after the US itself. The colón has been firm against the dollar through 2025.
- United States (USD 5.79, benchmark) — Every other country in the index is measured against this number. Worth remembering that the US “price” is itself a national average; a Big Mac in Manhattan and one in rural Mississippi are not the same product economically, but The Economist uses a single national figure.
- Canada (CAD 7.81, USD 5.43, -6.2%) — Canada looks roughly fair-valued. CAD 7.81 at an exchange rate of 1.44 lands at $5.43, six points below the US — close enough that the Big Mac Index would call the loonie only mildly undervalued.
- Mexico (MXN 95, USD 4.60, -20.5%) — A 20% discount on the US price, mostly driven by the peso’s weakness since 2024. Mexico is the cheapest of the major NAFTA/USMCA economies by some margin.
- Brazil (BRL 23.90, USD 4.03, -30.5%) — Despite Brazil’s status as a large middle-income economy, the real has weakened enough that the Big Mac in São Paulo is nearly a third cheaper than in Chicago.
- Venezuela (VES 252, USD 4.45, -23.1%) — I report the official rate here. Venezuela’s parallel/black-market rates would tell a very different story, and I flag this caveat below.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Europe: Switzerland Sits Alone at the Top
Europe is where the index produces its most famous data point: a single Big Mac in Switzerland will set you back CHF 7.20, which converts to USD 7.99 at the January 2026 exchange rate of CHF 0.90 per USD. That is 38% more expensive than the US — the highest premium in the entire 54-country dataset, and it has been that way for years.
What’s interesting in Europe is the breadth between the Alpine peak and Eastern Europe’s basement:
- Switzerland (CHF 7.20, USD 7.99, +38.0%) — Swiss wages and rents do most of the work here. Even after the franc’s modest softening against the dollar in 2025, the local franc price has held firm. This is the burger that headlines news stories every year.
- Norway (NOK 75.00, USD 6.67, +15.3%) — Norway is the only non-Swiss Western European country with a Big Mac materially more expensive than the US. High wages and Norway’s well-documented “cost of everything” reputation are doing the lifting.
- Euro area (EUR 5.67, USD 5.95, +2.8%) — The Economist treats the eurozone as a single observation. At EUR 5.67 and an exchange rate of 0.95 EUR/USD, the eurozone Big Mac sits a hair above the US — essentially fair-valued by PPP.
- Britain (GBP 4.59, USD 5.73, -1.1%) — Britain is essentially at parity. The pound looks very close to its PPP-implied rate in early 2026. This is a quiet result; in 2015 the implied undervaluation was much wider.
- Sweden (SEK 62, USD 5.67, -2.1%) and Denmark (DKK 39, USD 5.49, -5.2%) — Both Nordic neighbors of Norway, both close to fair value. Nordic countries hand-cluster in the index almost every year.
- Turkey (TRY 190, USD 5.32, -8.2%) — Notable because of the lira’s collapse over the past five years. Despite the local price ballooning, the dollar-equivalent has stabilized as the lira-USD exchange rate has caught up to the inflation.
- Poland (PLN 20.90, USD 5.21, -10.0%) and Czech Republic (CZK 109, USD 4.56, -21.2%) — Central Europe still trades at a meaningful discount to Western Europe.
- Hungary (HUF 1,420, USD 3.65, -37.0%) and Romania (RON 16.25, USD 3.43, -40.8%) — Eastern Europe widens the gap further.
- Ukraine (UAH 120, USD 2.86, -50.7%) and Moldova (MDL 65, USD 3.52, -39.2%) — Ukraine has by far the cheapest Big Mac in Europe at USD 2.86. The war’s effect on the hryvnia and on local incomes is impossible to disentangle from PPP signal here.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Asia: Where Most of the World’s “Cheap” Burgers Live
If you sort all 54 countries by dollar-equivalent price, the bottom of the table is dominated by Asia. Of the ten cheapest Big Macs globally, six are in Asia: Taiwan, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
A region-level breakdown:
- Taiwan (NT$ 78, USD 2.38, -58.8%) — Taiwan holds the title of cheapest Big Mac in the entire 54-country dataset. The NT dollar trades around 32.7 per USD, and McDonald’s local pricing has been remarkably stable. For a dollar holder visiting Taipei, your money goes further than almost anywhere on earth measured this way.
- Indonesia (IDR 41,000, USD 2.54, -56.2%) — Second cheapest worldwide. The rupiah is one of the weaker emerging-market currencies against the dollar.
- India (INR 226, USD 2.62, -54.8%) — Worth a footnote: the Indian “Big Mac” is not really a Big Mac. McDonald’s India serves the Maharaja Mac, which uses chicken (or paneer) instead of beef, for religious reasons. The Economist still includes it in the index but flags the caveat. The local-price-to-dollar number is still informative as a wage proxy, but it isn’t strictly the same product.
- Singapore (SGD 6.95, USD 5.17, -10.7%) — Singapore is the outlier of Asia: a high-income city-state where the burger is only modestly cheaper than in the US. The Singapore dollar is one of the more “fair-valued” currencies in the entire index.
- Hong Kong (HKD 24, USD 3.08, -46.8%) — Despite Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the world’s priciest cities, the Big Mac there is half the US price. This is mostly a HKD peg story: the Hong Kong dollar is pegged inside a narrow band against the USD, so local burger prices have not adjusted upward in line with wages.
- Japan (JPY 480, USD 3.11, -46.3%) — Japan deserves its own full article (and I wrote one). The yen has fallen from roughly 110 to over 150 per dollar in the last four years, and McDonald’s Japan has kept the local-currency price restrained.
- China (CNY 25.50, USD 3.52, -39.2%) — At RMB 25.5, China’s Big Mac sits roughly 39% below the US benchmark. The Big Mac Index has historically been used to argue the yuan is undervalued; on the January 2026 numbers, that argument is still alive but weaker than ten years ago.
- South Korea (KRW 5,500, USD 3.84, -33.6%) — Korea’s won has weakened materially since 2022.
- Thailand (THB 135, USD 4.01, -30.8%) and Malaysia (MYR 13.15, USD 3.00, -48.1%) — Southeast Asia clusters cheaply, with Singapore being the lone exception.
- Pakistan (PKR 1,050, USD 3.77, -35.0%) and Azerbaijan (AZN 6.24, USD 3.67, -36.6%) — Two less-obvious entries that show up in the lower half of the table.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Middle East: The Gulf Cluster
The Middle East in this dataset is dominated by oil-currency countries whose Big Macs sit in a fairly narrow band, slightly below US prices. The exception is Lebanon, which is its own story.
- Lebanon (LBP 480,000, USD 5.36, -7.4%) — Lebanon’s hyper-devalued pound makes the local-currency price look astronomical (480,000 LBP), but at an official-ish exchange rate of around 89,550 per USD, the dollar equivalent is $5.36 — just below the US. Lebanon’s economy in 2025-2026 has been operating on multiple parallel exchange rates, so this number is more of a snapshot than a stable fact.
- Saudi Arabia (SAR 19, USD 5.07, -12.5%) — The riyal is pegged to the dollar, so Saudi Arabia’s PPP “implied” rate is mostly a function of how local price adjusts vs. US price. Saudi sits about an eighth cheaper than the US.
- UAE (AED 18, USD 4.90, -15.4%) — Similar story to Saudi Arabia: dirham pegged to the dollar, modest PPP discount.
- Israel (ILS 17, USD 4.71, -18.6%) — Israel had historically traded close to US parity. The 2024–2025 shekel weakness pushed it down to a 19% discount in January 2026.
- Kuwait (KWD 1.40, USD 4.54, -21.5%) and Bahrain (BHD 1.70, USD 4.51, -22.1%) and Qatar (QAR 15, USD 4.12, -28.8%) — Three Gulf states clustered close together. Of the trio, Qatar sells the cheapest Big Mac.
- Oman (OMR 1.53, USD 3.97, -31.4%) and Jordan (JOD 2.50, USD 3.53, -39.1%) — Jordan is the cheapest in the Middle East subset, though it’s still not in the global bottom 15.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Oceania: Just Two Data Points
Oceania is the smallest region in The Economist’s dataset — just Australia and New Zealand are tracked.
- Australia (AUD 7.75, USD 4.87, -15.9%) — At AUD 7.75 and a USD exchange rate of ~1.59 AUD/USD, the Australian Big Mac converts to $4.87, about 16% below the US benchmark. The Aussie dollar has been broadly soft against the USD throughout 2025.
- New Zealand (NZD 8.40, USD 4.77, -17.5%) — Slightly cheaper in USD terms than Australia. The Kiwi dollar has tracked the AUD closely.
I’d love to see more Pacific data — Fiji, Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia — but McDonald’s footprint and The Economist’s coverage don’t extend there. (Adding non-Mc proxy data is a P2 idea I’ve been thinking about.)
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
Africa: The Quietest Region in the Index
Africa is dramatically under-represented in the Big Mac Index, simply because McDonald’s footprint on the continent is small. The 2026 dataset contains exactly two African countries.
- South Africa (ZAR 51.90, USD 2.78, -52.0%) — At ZAR 51.90 and an exchange rate of 18.69 per USD, the South African Big Mac is USD 2.78 — less than half the US price. The rand has weakened structurally over the past decade.
- Egypt (EGP 135, USD 2.69, -53.6%) — Egypt’s pound underwent a steep devaluation in 2024; the dollar-equivalent Big Mac price is now about 54% below the US benchmark. Egypt is the cheapest Big Mac in Africa and the fifth-cheapest globally.
Two data points is not a region; it’s two dots. For everything between Cairo and Cape Town — Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia — there is currently no Big Mac data because there are no Big Macs.
Source: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026.
What’s Missing — And Where I’m Trying to Fill the Gaps
The Big Mac Index covers 54 countries as of January 2026. Roughly 140 don’t appear in it. The missing list is structurally important if you’re thinking about PPP globally:
- Russia — Last appeared in the index in 2021 before McDonald’s exited. Vkusno-i-tochka, the successor brand, sells a comparable burger but is not in The Economist’s official data.
- Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Ghana, Ethiopia, Senegal — McDonald’s has no or near-zero presence across most of sub-Saharan and North Africa.
- Iran — Sanctions and McDonald’s absence.
- Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) — Limited coverage.
- Most of the Balkans except Romania and Hungary, Belarus, Cuba, most of the Caribbean — All gaps.
On my side, I’m working on a “proxy basket” — KFC’s Zinger, Subway’s footlong, or local equivalents — to extend the spirit of the index to the missing countries without claiming it’s still strictly a Big Mac Index. That’s a 2026 H2 project. If you have menu data from any of those countries, I’d genuinely like to see it; the email is at the end.
How to Read These Numbers Honestly
The 38% Swiss premium and the 59% Taiwanese discount are not predictions about where currencies should go. They’re the gap between two prices, measured at one moment, for one product. The Big Mac Index gives you a starting question — “is this currency cheap or dear?” — but the answer requires more than one burger.
Things that move the burger price independently of “currency value”:
- Wage levels at McDonald’s local franchises
- Real estate costs (rent on the Zürich Bahnhofstrasse store)
- Beef tariffs and local input costs
- Tax regimes (Brazil’s tax-on-tax structure adds to local pricing)
- Whether the product is even the same (India’s Maharaja Mac uses chicken)
- McDonald’s brand positioning (premium in Asia, mass-market in the US)
I cover those in a separate piece on the limits of PPP and the Big Mac Index. For this article, the question I wanted to answer was just: what does the January 2026 data actually say, country by country? That’s the table above.
Methodology and Corrections
All prices in this article come from The Economist’s January 2026 Big Mac Index release. I pull the raw CSV roughly monthly, cross-check it against McDonald’s local menu pages when I can, and publish the underlying data on bigmacindex.app with no paywall.
Want to see exactly how I get this data? Here’s my methodology. Email me at [email protected] with corrections — I’d rather fix one wrong number than ship a hundred clean-looking ones that are quietly off.
Data: The Economist Big Mac Index, January 2026. Methodology: see /about#methodology. Author: Robert. W, independent developer and editor of bigmacindex.app.