The most expensive countries in the world in 2026

On the everyday prices we track, the most expensive country in the world is Switzerland, with a score of 192 on our price index, where 100 is the typical country. Germany (184), the United Kingdom (183), Denmark (183) and Uruguay (162) complete the top five. The index combines three prices in US dollars: a Big Mac, a litre of petrol (gas) and a kilowatt-hour of household electricity, across 51 countries. Adjust for income, though, and a very different set of countries turns out to be the hardest places to afford the same things.

How the index works

We keep it deliberately simple so you can check it. For each of the three items we find the median price across all 51 countries: $4.94 for a Big Mac, $1.48 for a litre of petrol, and $0.17 per kWh. Each country’s price is divided by that median, and the three ratios are averaged and multiplied by 100. A score of 150 means everyday prices run about 50% above the typical country on these items.

The ingredients are The Economist’s Big Mac Index (July 2026 survey) and GlobalPetrolPrices for petrol and electricity (retrieved 2026-10-13). Germany uses the euro-area Big Mac price. Lebanon, New Zealand and Sweden are left out because one of the three prices is missing. What the index does not include matters too: rent, healthcare and schooling are usually the biggest costs of living somewhere, and we do not track them. Read this as a ranking of everyday consumer prices, not of total living costs.

The 15 most expensive countries on everyday prices

23 of 51 countries score above 100. The United States ranks #21 with 108. Against the median, its Big Mac is 26% higher, its petrol 17% lower and its electricity 14% higher.

Most of the top 15 are high-income economies: 13 have an average income above the median of the countries we rank. The exceptions are Colombia and Guatemala, where at least one of the three prices is high by world standards even though local incomes are not. Those are the countries where an expensive price list really bites, as the income-adjusted ranking below shows.

What pushes each country up the list

No country is expensive on everything. For each of the top five, here is the item that sits furthest above the median:

• Switzerland: electricity at 2.2× the median ($0.37 per kWh)
• Germany: electricity at 2.5× the median ($0.41 per kWh)
• United Kingdom: electricity at 2.4× the median ($0.41 per kWh)
• Denmark: electricity at 2.1× the median ($0.35 per kWh)
• Uruguay: the Big Mac at 1.8× the median ($8.94)

The drivers differ for good reasons. Burger prices track local wages and rents, so they are highest where pay is high. Pump price gaps are mostly about tax: European countries put heavy duty and VAT on fuel, while producers in the Gulf keep it low. Household electricity depends on how a country generates power and how much tax and network charges are layered on top. You can explore each one on our petrol and electricity trackers, and see the most extreme cases in the most expensive gas in the world.

Adjusted for income: where these prices hurt most

A high price is easy to bear on a high income. To see the burden on residents, we priced a simple basket (one Big Mac, a 50-litre tank of petrol and 300 kWh of household electricity) and divided it by each country’s average daily income (World Bank GNI per capita). These are the ten countries where that basket takes the longest to earn:

None of the ten most expensive countries in dollar terms appears on this list. Switzerland, top of the dollar ranking, needs just 0.8 days of income for the basket. The basket is lightest in Qatar, at 0.2 days. Being expensive in dollars and being expensive to live in are close to opposite things: the priciest countries are usually the ones whose residents can most easily pay. Our affordability index ranks every country this way.

Where phones fit

Phones are left out of the index because we track Apple’s prices in only 12 countries. Among those, the iPhone 18 Pro is dearest in India at ₹164,900 ($1,719) and cheapest in the United States at $1,199, a reminder that imported goods follow their own logic of taxes, duties and pricing strategy. US prices exclude sales tax. For the other end of everyday prices, see the cheapest countries to live.