🇳🇿 Prices in New Zealand
The average person in New Zealand earns about $46,630 a year (World Bank GNI per capita, 2025). Here is what everyday products cost locally, in NZD and US dollars, weighed against that income.
Big Mac
$4.94
13 min of work
Gasoline
$1.85/L
$7.00 per US gallon
Average income
$46,630
per year · World Bank GNI, 2025
The cost of living in New Zealand
A Big Mac here is $4.94, cheaper than 49% of the countries we track (28th lowest overall). Priced against local wages that is roughly 13 min of work for a single burger, a cleaner read on everyday affordability than the exchange rate alone.
A litre of gasoline costs about $1.85 in New Zealand($7.00 per US gallon), the 133rd cheapest of 170countries. Fuel prices are driven as much by tax and subsidy policy as by the oil market, which is why they vary far more between countries than crude prices ever do.
Taken together, New Zealand sits in the 15th income position of the 53countries we cover, and its prices largely track that. The headline takeaway is the one that runs through this whole site: a dollar figure only becomes meaningful once you set it against what people here actually earn. That is what the affordability numbers above are for.
Compare with another country
Prices in New Zealand: common questions
How much is a Big Mac in New Zealand?
A Big Mac costs about $4.94 in New Zealand, which is roughly 13 min of work at the local average wage. Prices come from The Economist's Big Mac Index.
How much is petrol in New Zealand?
A litre of gasoline costs around $1.85 in New Zealand (about $7.00 per US gallon), per GlobalPetrolPrices.
Where does this data come from?
Every price is scraped from a first-party source — Apple, Netflix, Spotify, The Economist and GlobalPetrolPrices — and income is World Bank GNI per capita. See our methodology page for the full detail.