A Big Mac in Egypt costs E£145. That’s the figure in The Economist’s July 2026 survey — $2.87 at 50.53 pounds to the dollar, 53.9% cheaper than the $6.22 an American pays. One month later, a reader named Hossam opened McDonald’s Egypt’s own delivery site and found the same burger listed at E£170.
Both numbers are real. They answer different questions. And the gap between them is the most useful thing I can tell you about prices in Egypt right now.
The short answer
| Price | In dollars | vs. USA ($6.22) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac Index, 1 July 2026 | E£145 | $2.87 | −53.9% |
| McDelivery menu, 1 August 2026 (reader-reported) | E£170 | $3.36 | −45.9% |
| GDP-adjusted “fair” price | — | $4.88 | −41.1% |
The dollar conversions both use the survey-day rate of 50.53, so the only thing that differs between the first two rows is the menu. If you want today’s rate instead, flip on Live Rates in the converter on the home page.
One more line before the details, because it surprised me: $2.87 is the highest dollar price Egypt has ever recorded in the index. Forty-two surveys, back to April 2003. The previous high was $2.75 in January 2024. Egypt is still the fifth-cheapest Big Mac of the 54 on the list — only Indonesia, Taiwan, India and the Philippines come in lower — but in dollar terms, it has never been less cheap.
Why the menu says E£170
Hossam’s email arrived on 1 August. It was short, precise, and it named its source — the menu page on mcdelivery.eg, McDonald’s Egypt’s official ordering site. Big Mac, E£170.
At the time, this site was showing E£125.
That’s the part I have to own. E£125 was the January 2026 figure. The July edition — E£145 — had been out since 29 July, and our data fetcher had an off-by-one in how it picked editions: it found the January file, decided that was the newest, and stopped looking. No error. No warning. The whole site would have stayed six months behind, all 54 countries, indefinitely. One reader audited my pipeline better than my pipeline did. (I’ve since made it refuse to publish anything older than what it’s replacing. Lesson learned, expensively — in credibility, not money.)
So the honest comparison isn’t E£125 vs E£170. It’s E£145 vs E£170 — a 17.2% gap, one month apart.
How much of that 17% is inflation, and how much is the delivery channel? I don’t know. Delivery menus often carry a markup over the counter, and I have no Egyptian in-store receipt from August to separate the two. I’d rather say that plainly than split the difference and pretend.
Why the index keeps E£145
The obvious question: if the menu says E£170, why not just publish E£170?
Because the index is a comparison, not a price list. The Economist prices all 54 countries on the same day — 1 July. If Egypt were measured in August while everyone else sits at July, Egypt would look more expensive relative to the rest purely because Egyptian prices move faster. The synchronisation is the whole point.
There’s a Chinese idiom that’s usually an insult, and here it’s almost a compliment — 刻舟求剑 (carve the boat to find the sword): a man drops his sword off a moving boat, cuts a notch where it fell, and dives at the notch when the boat docks. The Economist carves every boat at the same instant. That’s what makes the notches comparable.
But if you’re the one looking for the sword — a traveller, a reader in Cairo, someone pricing a trip — the notch is already behind you. So we show both: E£145 as the index figure, Hossam’s E£170 as a credited note beside it on the Egypt page. In a country where the menu moves this fast, the gap itself is information. Hiding it would be the real mistake.
Six years, two currencies
Here’s the part that changed how I read every “Egypt is cheap” headline.
| Survey | Big Mac | EGP per $ | In dollars | vs. USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2020 | E£42 | 15.88 | $2.64 | −45.1% |
| Jul 2022 | E£46 | 18.95 | $2.43 | −52.9% |
| Jan 2023 | E£55 | 29.85 | $1.84 | −65.6% |
| Jul 2023 | E£81 | 30.93 | $2.62 | −53.1% |
| Jan 2024 | E£85 | 30.90 | $2.75 | −51.7% |
| Jul 2024 | E£120 | 48.60 | $2.47 | −56.6% |
| Jan 2025 | E£135 | 50.25 | $2.69 | −53.6% |
| Jul 2025 | E£125 | 49.35 | $2.53 | −57.9% |
| Jan 2026 | E£125 | 47.24 | $2.65 | −56.8% |
| Jul 2026 | E£145 | 50.53 | $2.87 | −53.9% |
In pounds, the Big Mac went from E£42 to E£145 — 3.45 times the price. In dollars, it went from $2.64 to $2.87. Twenty-three cents.
Same burger. Same six years. If you earn dollars, nothing much happened. If you earn pounds, the price more than tripled. The full Egyptian series is in the open dataset, every edition back to 2003.
The pattern: the pound jumps, the menu follows
Look at two rows in that table — January 2023 and July 2024. Both are the survey right after the pound fell off a cliff.
- Late 2022 into January 2023. The rate went from 18.95 to 29.85 — the pound lost over a third of its dollar value in six months. The menu went up only 19.6%, from E£46 to E£55. Result: a $1.84 Big Mac, 65.6% below the US, the widest discount in this window. By July 2023 the menu had caught up — E£81, up 47% in one survey — and the dollar price was back to $2.62.
- March 2024. The Central Bank of Egypt raised rates by 600 basis points and let the pound float, and it went from roughly 30.85 to the dollar to about 50 on the day. The Big Mac went from E£85 to E£120 by July — a 41% increase against a 57% currency move. Dollar price dipped to $2.47, then recovered.
Every time, the currency moves first and the menu chases it within one or two surveys. Menus are sticky — reprinting boards, updating the app, absorbing a month of complaints all cost something, which is why prices lag the currency almost everywhere. In Egypt the lag is just easier to see, because the jumps are so big.
Does the menu ever overshoot? Maybe once. Between January and July 2025 the Big Mac went down — E£135 to E£125 — while the rate barely moved. I don’t know why. The dataset doesn’t say, and I’m not going to invent a reason in public.
Is the pound really “half price”?
On the raw index, yes: E£145 implies the pound is undervalued by 53.9% against the dollar. That’s the number most headlines run with.
The raw index has a known blind spot, though — it compares a country with a GDP per head of about $7,200 to one at about $90,000. Labour, rent and everything else that goes into a burger is cheaper in the poorer country, so of course the burger is too. The Economist publishes a GDP-adjusted version for exactly this reason.
Adjusted, Egypt’s Big Mac “should” cost about $4.88. It costs $2.87. The pound is still undervalued by 41.1% — less dramatic than 53.9%, but very far from fair value. Even Hossam’s E£170 menu price, at $3.36, sits well under the adjusted line. The verdict doesn’t change with the menu. Only the size of it does.
What this means if you’re going
If you’re paying in dollars, euros or pounds sterling: a Big Mac in Egypt is still cheap — around half the US price on the survey-day rate, a bit more on the delivery menu. Just don’t expect it to be the 2023 kind of cheap. That window, when a Big Mac cost $1.84, closed within six months.
If you’re paying in Egyptian pounds, none of this feels cheap. E£145 is 3.45 times what the same burger cost in 2020, and the calculator shows what your pounds buy at the market rate versus the Big Mac rate.
And if you’re in Egypt and see a different price — at the counter, on the app, anywhere — send it. That’s how E£170 got onto this page in the first place. The full story of Hossam’s report is here, and the methodology explains how reader prices sit next to the index without replacing it.
The one-line version
In 2020, an Egyptian paid E£42 for a Big Mac and a visitor paid $2.64. In 2026, the Egyptian pays more than three times as much, and the visitor pays twenty-three cents more.
That’s the entire Big Mac Index, in one country. 刻舟求剑.