The Affordability Index

A price is only half the story. The other half is the income it’s measured against. Here we divide real prices by each country’s average income (World Bank GNI per capita) to show what things actually cost in the currency that matters most: your time.

iPhone 17 Pro — days of work

Days of average income to buy one iPhone 17 Pro. The dollar price barely moves between these countries; the days do.

Big Mac — minutes of work

Minutes the average worker labours for one burger, across 52 countries.

Netflix Premium — share of a month's income

A month of Premium Netflix as a percentage of one month of average income.

Source: apple.com storefront API, The Economist Big Mac Index (CC-BY) + World Bank GNI per capita, retrieved 2026-07-03. Converted at current exchange rates. US prices exclude sales tax (varies by state); all other countries include VAT/GST.

Frequently asked questions

How is affordability calculated?

We take each country's average income (World Bank GNI per capita) and divide the price by the appropriate share of it: days for a big one-off purchase like a phone, minutes for a cheap item like a burger, and percent of a month for a monthly subscription.

Why use average income instead of median?

GNI per capita is published consistently for almost every country by the World Bank, which makes cross-country comparison fair and reproducible. Median wage data isn't available on the same standardised basis worldwide.

Doesn't this overstate the cost in poorer countries?

It reflects average income, so in highly unequal countries the typical person may face an even steeper cost than shown. If anything the index understates how unaffordable these items are for most people there.