Purchasing power by country: what $100 really buys in 50 countries

Using the Big Mac as a common basket, $100 goes furthest in Indonesia, where at today’s exchange rate it converts to IDR 1,792,434 and buys 41.7 Big Macs. That is as much burger as $259 buys in the United States. It goes least far in Uruguay: 11.2 Big Macs, worth $70 in US terms. In America itself $100 buys 16.1. Of the 54 economies in The Economist’s latest survey, 42 stretch a dollar further than the US does and 11 stretch it less.

How the $100 test works

Three steps, all done fresh from our data each time the site updates:

1. Convert $100 into local currency at the market rate from our exchange-rate feed (retrieved 2026-10-13).
2. Divide by the local Big Mac price from The Economist’s July 2026 survey to get the number of burgers.
3. Multiply that number by the US Big Mac price ($6.22) to express it as “what this would cost in America.”

The last column is a one-item purchasing power parity reading. A figure above $100 means your money buys more there than at home in the US; below $100 means less. If you want the theory behind it, including implied exchange rates and where PPP breaks, read purchasing power parity explained.

Where $100 stretches furthest, and where it shrinks

The ten places where a $100 bill buys the most burgers:

• Indonesia: 41.7 Big Macs, worth about $259 of US spending
• Taiwan: 41.0 Big Macs, worth about $255 of US spending
• India: 40.6 Big Macs, worth about $253 of US spending
• Philippines: 37.2 Big Macs, worth about $231 of US spending
• Egypt: 36.3 Big Macs, worth about $226 of US spending
• Vietnam: 34.1 Big Macs, worth about $212 of US spending
• Japan: 31.7 Big Macs, worth about $197 of US spending
• Hong Kong: 30.8 Big Macs, worth about $191 of US spending
• Ukraine: 30.2 Big Macs, worth about $188 of US spending
• South Africa: 29.1 Big Macs, worth about $181 of US spending

And the ten where it buys the fewest, starting with the tightest: Uruguay (11.2), Switzerland (11.4), Norway (12.3), Colombia (12.3), Israel (13.4), the United Kingdom (13.8), Costa Rica (14.5), the euro area (14.5), Denmark (14.5), Sweden (14.5). The pattern is broadly what you would expect: lower-income economies tend to sit at the generous end and high-wage ones at the tight end, because a burger is mostly local labour, rent and ingredients. But it is not a perfect sorting. Hong Kong makes the top ten despite average incomes above half the US level. There the burger is cheap relative to local pay, which says more about how food is priced locally than about wages.

What $100 buys in every Big Mac country

Cheap for a visitor is not cheap for a local

The table measures purchasing power for someone who arrives with dollars. People who earn locally see a different picture. Among the ten countries where $100 goes furthest, the median average income (World Bank GNI per capita) is $5,120 a year; among the ten where it goes least far, it is $56,180. The cheap burgers exist largely because the wages behind them are low.

So the country at the top of this ranking is not where a Big Mac is easiest to afford. In Indonesia one burger costs roughly 58 min of work at the average income, against 9 min in the United States. Our affordability index ranks countries that way, and the average income by country guide shows the incomes behind it.

Three reasons a burger can mislead

It is one product. Real PPP studies price hundreds of goods and services. A Big Mac captures food, wages and rent reasonably well, but says nothing about the cost of a flat, a doctor or a car. Treat each number as a strong hint about local price levels, not a full cost-of-living figure.

Exchange rates keep moving after the survey. The burger prices are from July 2026; the exchange rates are from 2026-10-13. The largest drift is in Venezuela, where the Big Mac was $4.51 at the survey-day rate and works out to $3.73 at today’s, a fall of 17% in dollar terms with no change on the menu board. That is why this page and our Big Mac Index page (which uses survey-day dollar prices) can disagree slightly.

Local quirks matter. A sales-tax change, a beef tariff or a franchise pricing decision can move one country without saying anything about its currency. For a broader view that adds fuel and electricity, see our ranking of the cheapest countries to live.