The cheapest countries to live in 2026, by everyday prices

Judged on everyday prices in US dollars, the cheapest country to live in is Egypt, scoring 34 on our price index (100 = the typical country), ahead of Venezuela (45) and Kuwait (46). Our basket of a Big Mac, a 50-litre tank of petrol and 300 kWh of household electricity costs $33 in Egypt, against $125 in the United States. One limit up front: housing is not in our data, so this is a ranking of daily costs, not rent.

What this ranking can and cannot tell you

For most people moving abroad, rent or a mortgage is the largest monthly cost, followed by things like healthcare, insurance and schooling. PricesAbroad does not collect any of those. What we do track, consistently and for dozens of countries, is a set of everyday prices: a Big Mac (a decent proxy for eating out, because it bundles local wages, rent and food costs), a litre of petrol (gas) and a kilowatt-hour of household power.

The index takes each price, divides it by the median across all 51 countries we can score ($4.94 for the burger, $1.48 a litre, 16.6¢ per kWh), and averages the three ratios. It is transparent and easy to reproduce, and it will flag countries where daily life is cheap. It will not tell you whether a two-bedroom flat in the capital is affordable. Lebanon, New Zealand and Sweden could not be scored because one of the three prices is missing.

The 15 cheapest countries by everyday prices

Basket = one Big Mac + 50 litres of petrol + 300 kWh of household electricity, at prices from The Economist’s July 2026 Big Mac survey and GlobalPetrolPrices (retrieved 2026-10-13). Every country here has its own page with the full price profile; start with Egypt.

Two kinds of cheap

The list mixes countries that are cheap for opposite reasons, and it matters which kind you are looking at.

Cheap because fuel and power cost little. In 13 of the 15, petrol or electricity costs less than half the median price. Several of these are oil and gas exporters that hold domestic fuel and power prices far below world levels as a matter of policy. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have an average income above the middle of our list, so they are not cheap because wages are low. Rents and imported goods there can be far from cheap. For fuel specifically, see the cheapest gas in the world and the cheapest electricity.

Cheap because wages are low. Egypt, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan and China have below-median incomes. Here a meal out is inexpensive because the people cooking and serving it are paid little, and local currencies often trade below their purchasing-power value. This is where a salary earned in dollars or euros stretches furthest, which is the logic behind remote workers and retirees choosing these countries. Our purchasing power by country guide shows exactly how far $100 goes in each.

The Big Mac is the easiest way to tell the two groups apart. Among the higher-income cheap countries the average burger costs $4.65; among the lower-income ones, $3.41. Energy is cheap in both, but only the second group is cheap across the board.

Cheap for whom?

Flip the perspective to someone earning a local average income and the picture changes. In the United States our basket takes 0.5 days of average income. In 12 of the 15 cheapest countries it takes longer than that, despite costing less in dollars. The heaviest burden in the group is in Pakistan, where the basket costs $94 but takes 22.8 days of income to pay for. Low prices and affordability are not the same thing; the affordability index ranks countries by the second. The flip side is what makes these places attractive to people paid in dollars. On the average US income, the basket in Egypt would take 3.2 hours of earnings, against 12.3 hours for the same basket at American prices.

Cheapest on each item

The composite smooths over big differences between items. Here are the five lowest prices for each one on its own.

Egypt makes all three top-five lists. Cheap burgers follow low wages and undervalued currencies, while the cheapest fuel and power tend to sit with energy producers that price them below world levels. If you are planning a trip rather than a move, our cheapest countries to visit guide weighs things differently, and the most expensive countries ranking shows the other end of this index.