A Big Mac in Rome costs €6.20 if you order it in McDonald’s own app, and €7.70 if you order it on Glovo. Same burger, same city. A quarter of the price is the delivery channel.
That’s the most useful thing I can tell you about Big Mac prices in Italy, and it took me a rewrite to get there. An earlier version of this page had a year-by-year price table where six of the eight numbers were interpolated, and city price ranges that were mostly inferred from wage data rather than observed. I’ve deleted both. Everything below is either an observed price with a date and a source, or labelled as my estimate.
The short answer
| Price | In dollars* | Source, date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Euro area, The Economist | €6.19 | $7.08 | Big Mac Index, 1 July 2026 |
| This site’s Italy line | €5.90 | $6.75 | editorial estimate, confidence 0.78 |
| Rome, McDonald’s app | €6.20 | $7.09 | eatmyindex, 16 Nov 2025 |
| Milan, McDonald’s app | €6.30 | $7.21 | eatmyindex, 16 Nov 2025 |
| Pozzallo (Sicily), McDonald’s app | €5.50 | $6.29 | eatmyindex, 16 Nov 2025 |
| Rome, Glovo delivery | €7.70 | $8.81 | prezzi-mondiali.it, 20 Aug 2026 |
| Milan, Glovo delivery | €8.00 | $9.15 | prezzi-mondiali.it, 20 Aug 2026 |
*All conversions at the July 2026 survey rate, €1 = $1.1437, so the rows compare like with like. The US Big Mac is $6.22.
So if someone asks how much a Big Mac costs in Italy: about €6 at the counter or in the app, about €8 delivered. If they ask where Italy sits in the Big Mac Index — it doesn’t, exactly. That’s the next section.
Italy isn’t in the index
The Economist doesn’t price Italy. It prices the euro area as one line — €6.19 in July 2026, now including Bulgaria, which joined the euro on 1 January. One currency, one number.
That’s a defensible choice for a currency index. It’s a bad answer to “how much is a Big Mac in Italy”, because the euro-area line folds together countries whose burgers differ by more than the gap between most neighbouring currencies. On this site’s own country lines, Spain sits at €5.40 and France at €6.35 — an 18% spread inside a single currency.
So this site publishes a separate editorial line for the five biggest euro economies. Italy’s is €5.90, which puts it 4.7% under the euro-area figure and 8.5% above the US once converted.
Ordering it vs having it brought
Here is every city prezzi-mondiali.it checked on Glovo on 20 August 2026 — single Big Mac, no fries, no drink:
| City | Glovo price | In dollars |
|---|---|---|
| Venice | €9.70 | $11.09 |
| Turin | €9.00 | $10.29 |
| Florence | €8.70 | $9.95 |
| Milan | €8.00 | $9.15 |
| Naples | €8.00 | $9.15 |
| Rome | €7.70 | $8.81 |
| Bologna | €7.50 | $8.58 |
| Verona | €7.00 | $8.01 |
Put the two cities that appear in both data sets side by side. Rome: €6.20 in the app, €7.70 delivered — +24%. Milan: €6.30 vs €8.00 — +27%.
Two honest caveats. The app readings are from November 2025 and the delivery readings from August 2026, so nine months of menu changes sit inside that gap. Nine months of ordinary menu inflation can’t plausibly explain a 25% difference — but it isn’t zero either. And three app readings is a thin sample. I’d rather show you three real numbers than eight smooth invented ones.
The delivery table also kills a claim I used to make. The old version of this page called Naples “the cheapest Italian city”, with a €5.20–€5.80 range derived from southern wage levels. On Glovo, Naples costs exactly what Milan does. Maybe it’s still cheaper at the counter — I have no counter price from Naples to say either way.
There’s a Chinese line for this, from the Yanzi Chunqiu: 橘生淮南则为橘,生于淮北则为枳 — an orange grown south of the Huai river is an orange; grown north of it, it’s a bitter trifoliate. Same tree, different ground, different fruit. Same Big Mac, different channel, different price.
Where the €5.90 comes from
Is this site’s own €5.90 too low, then? Probably a little.
It was set in May as a midpoint between eatmyindex’s lowest reading (€5.50, Pozzallo) and a central-Rome tourist-zone menu reported by Joy della Vita at €6.50. Looking at all three app readings instead of the lowest one, the average is €6.00 — and eatmyindex’s own rolling figure is €6.00 too. Ten cents doesn’t change a single comparison on this page, and Italy’s line will be reviewed with the next round of editorial checks. Delivery prices stay out of it: the index is about what the burger costs, not what it costs to have someone carry it.
Against the neighbours
Using this site’s editorial lines for the big five, all at the same July survey rate:
| Big Mac | In dollars | vs. USA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| France | €6.35 | $7.26 | +16.8% |
| Germany | €6.30 | $7.21 | +15.8% |
| Euro area (The Economist) | €6.19 | $7.08 | +13.8% |
| Netherlands | €6.10 | $6.98 | +12.2% |
| Italy | €5.90 | $6.75 | +8.5% |
| Spain | €5.40 | $6.18 | −0.7% |
| USA | $6.22 | $6.22 | — |
Italy is cheaper than France and Germany — about 6–7% in raw euros — and dearer than Spain. Every one of the big five except Spain is more expensive than America now. That’s mostly the euro. At the January 2025 survey — the numbers the earlier version of this page used — €1 bought $1.05. On the July 2026 survey day it bought $1.14. Same burgers, roughly 9% more dollars each. The country pages for Italy, Germany, France and Spain carry the full source notes.
Cheap in euros, expensive in hours
Italy is one of five EU countries with no statutory minimum wage — alongside Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden (Eurofound). Pay floors come from national sector contracts, the contratti collettivi nazionali di lavoro, of which there are close to a thousand (ETUI, 2025).
For restaurant and fast-food staff, the relevant one is the hospitality contract, CCNL Pubblici Esercizi. From 1 June 2026 its lowest grades pay €1,390.20 a month (level 7) and €1,491.57 (level 6) gross — and Italy pays 14 months a year, a thirteenth in December and a fourteenth with July. Annualised over a 40-hour week, that’s €9.36–€10.04 an hour.
| Big Mac | Wage floor | Minutes of work | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | €6.30 | €13.90/hr Mindestlohn | 27 |
| France | €6.35 | €12.02/hr SMIC | 32 |
| Italy | €5.90 | €9.36–€10.04/hr (CCNL, annualised) | 35–38 |
So the Italian Big Mac is the cheapest of the three in euros — and the most expensive in time. I had this number at 44 minutes in the earlier version, because I’d used a rough €8 hourly rate and forgotten the two extra monthly payments. The direction holds. The size was overstated.
The floor itself is a live political fight. A €9-an-hour statutory minimum was tabled by the opposition in 2023 and shelved by the governing coalition; Tuscany then tried to reward €9 employers in public procurement and the national government challenged the regional law in 2025. And on paper, contract coverage is close to 100% — but that counts only registered work, in a country where the informal economy is a real slice of the total.
A footnote from 1986
Italy’s first McDonald’s opened in Bolzano in 1985, but the one everyone remembers opened on 20 March 1986 at Piazza di Spagna in Rome, at the foot of the Spanish Steps (italiani.it). Crowds, protests, a broken window. Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food movement grew directly out of the backlash, and it now runs in more than 160 countries (Time).
Forty years later, the Big Mac at that corner is still the one tourists price-check: €6.50 on the most recent menu report, against €6.20 in the app across town.
Frequently asked questions
How much is a Big Mac in Italy?
About €6 ordered at the counter or in the McDonald’s app — €6.20 in Rome and €6.30 in Milan on the most recent app readings, €5.50 in a small Sicilian town. On Glovo, €7.00 to €9.70 depending on the city. This site’s editorial line is €5.90.
Is a Big Mac cheaper in Italy than in the US?
Not any more. At the July 2026 survey rate, €5.90 is $6.75 — 8.5% above the US price of $6.22. In Rome or Milan via the app, the gap is 14–16%. Italy is cheaper than France and Germany, though.
Why isn’t Italy in the Big Mac Index?
The Economist treats the euro area as one currency with one price, €6.19 in July 2026. It doesn’t publish member countries separately, so any Italy-specific figure — including this site’s — is someone else’s estimate.
What’s the cheapest city in Italy for a Big Mac?
On delivery, Verona (€7.00) and Bologna (€7.50) were cheapest in August 2026; Venice (€9.70) the dearest. For counter or app prices, there isn’t enough data to rank cities honestly. Three readings isn’t a league table.
Send a receipt
If you’ve bought a Big Mac in Italy recently — counter, kiosk or app, any city — the photo of the scontrino is the single most useful thing you can send. Three app readings is all I’ve found published, and every new one makes this page less of an estimate. Email [email protected]; the methodology explains how reader prices sit beside the index without replacing it. Hossam’s report from Egypt is what one reader’s number did to that country’s page.
The Big Mac is supposed to be the same everywhere. In Italy it isn’t even the same within one street — it depends on whether you walk in or tap a screen.