What $50 of Groceries Buys in 20 Countries, Adjusted for Local Food Prices

A World Food Day Look at How Far the Same Grocery Money Goes, and Why the Answer Changes Aisle by Aisle

Published: October 16, 2026, 7:46 a.m. ET

Fact-checked

Woman buying groceries with cash, focusing on healthy and budget-friendly food.

Credit: Daily Vitality

Key Takeaways

•At 2021 prices and exchange rates, a grocery run that costs $50 in the US would cost about $25 in India and about $88 in South Korea, with Canada at roughly $63.
•The ranking shifts by aisle: the US is unusually expensive for vegetables and unusually cheap for cooking oils and fats, so many "cheap" countries charge more than the US for oil.
•These are the latest official benchmark figures, and currencies and prices have moved a lot since 2021, so they show the general pattern rather than today's checkout totals.

Picture your usual grocery run: a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, some chicken, a bag of apples, a few peppers, olive oil, coffee. The receipt says $50. Now imagine taking that same cart through a supermarket in Mexico City, Paris, Seoul or Mumbai. Would the total come to $30? $80? And would every aisle be cheaper, or every aisle pricier, in the same way?

Most "groceries around the world" lists answer that with a handful of prices someone found online. That approach is fun, but it has a weak spot. One brand of cereal in one store on one day can't tell you much about a whole country. For World Food Day, we took a different approach. We used the official price comparisons behind the World Bank's international economic statistics. Then we turned them into something you can picture: the local cost of a $50 US grocery basket in 20 of the world's largest consumer economies.

The headline ranking is interesting on its own. The more surprising story sits one layer down, aisle by aisle. The countries that look cheap overall aren't cheap for everything, and the US itself turns out to be one of the priciest places on Earth for a very ordinary aisle. Here's how we did the math, what the numbers show and how to read them in 2026.

How we turned $50 into 20 price tags

The data behind every number

Every figure in this article comes from one free, public source: the International Comparison Program (ICP), a global price survey coordinated by the World Bank. Once per cycle, statistical agencies in each participating country collect prices for hundreds of comparable goods and services. The ICP then converts those prices into purchasing power parities (PPPs) and price level indices (PLIs). The latest completed round covers 2021, and we pulled its figures straight from the World Bank's ICP 2021 database in September 2026.

A price level index is a simple idea with a technical name. It compares what things cost in a country, converted at the market exchange rate, with an average. A PLI of 150 means prices are 50% above the benchmark, and a PLI of 50 means they're half. The World Bank publishes PLIs with the world average set to 100. We rebased every value so that the US equals 100, which lets us read each index directly as "percent of American prices."

The formula

For each country, the $50 figure is:

$50 × (country's grocery price level ÷ US grocery price level)

The grocery measure we used is the ICP category called "food and non-alcoholic beverages," which covers what a typical cart holds, from bread and meat to coffee, juice and bottled water. For the US, that index was 116.5 in 2021 (world average = 100). Japan's was 191.2. So Japan sat at 164% of the US level, and a $50 American basket works out to about $82 there.

Here's the same result worked the long way, using Japan again. The ICP's food purchasing power parity for Japan was about 180 yen per dollar. The average market exchange rate in 2021 was about 110 yen per dollar. Dividing one by the other gives 1.64, the same 164% from a different direction. We ran that cross-check for every country, and each one matched.

How we chose the 20 countries

We didn't pick favorite destinations. The rule was mechanical: the 20 largest economies by household consumption spending in the ICP 2021 data, after the US itself. That gives China, Japan, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Australia, Indonesia, Türkiye, Poland, Egypt, the Netherlands and Switzerland. (Saudi Arabia was next in line.) Together they cover almost every continent and a very wide range of price levels.

A second opinion from Europe

As a check, we compared our results with the European Union's statistics office, which publishes its own food price levels for European countries. For the eight countries both sources cover, Eurostat's 2021 food price level indices put them in exactly the same order as our ICP-based figures: Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Türkiye. Once both sets are expressed relative to one another, the levels land within about two points. That's reassuring, since the two systems are run by different teams.

Note

The "$50 basket" is a translation of price levels, not a shopping cart that someone carried around the world. The ICP compares national average prices for goods that are comparable across countries and that matter in each country's spending. It does not price one identical list of products everywhere.

What a $50 US grocery run costs in 20 countries

The ranked table

Here's the full ranking, from the cheapest to the most expensive, with the US in the middle as the $50 benchmark. The last column flips the question around: if you converted $50 at the market rate and spent it locally, how much grocery value would you get compared with what $50 buys at home?

Rank	Country	Grocery price level (US = 100)	Cost of a $50 US basket	What $50 buys vs. the US
1	India	50	$25.04	About 2.0×
2	Egypt	55	$27.39	About 1.8×
3	Russia	58	$28.89	About 1.7×
4	Türkiye	64	$31.81	About 1.6×
5	Brazil	69	$34.64	About 1.4×
6	Poland	73	$36.36	About 1.4×
7	Indonesia	76	$38.21	About 1.3×
8	Mexico	86	$42.99	About 1.2×
9	United Kingdom	95	$47.49	About 1.05×
10	Spain	98	$49.13	About the same
11	Netherlands	98	$49.21	About the same
—	United States	100	$50.00	Benchmark
12	Germany	105	$52.35	About 96%
13	Italy	106	$53.09	About 94%
14	France	111	$55.26	About 90%
15	China	112	$55.81	About 90%
16	Canada	125	$62.56	About 80%
17	Australia	127	$63.62	About 79%
18	Japan	164	$82.03	About 61%
19	Switzerland	166	$83.02	About 60%
20	South Korea	175	$87.60	About 57%

Source: Daily Vitality calculation from World Bank ICP 2021, "food and non-alcoholic beverages." 2021 prices and 2021 average market exchange rates.

Three groups, not twenty rungs

It's tempting to read this like a leaderboard, but the World Bank itself warns that its price level indices aren't meant to rank countries strictly. Small gaps between neighbors shouldn't be over-read. So it helps to think of the table as three broad groups.

Well below US prices. India, Egypt, Russia, Türkiye, Brazil, Poland and Indonesia all land between about half and three-quarters of US grocery price levels. In India, the $50 basket comes to about $25, so the same money covers roughly twice as much.

Basically level with the US. The United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy all sit within about six points of the US. Mexico, at 86, is a little cheaper than that group. France and China, around 111, are a little dearer. For a traveler, a grocery run in Madrid or Amsterdam in 2021 would have felt surprisingly familiar at the register.

Well above US prices. Canada and Australia run about a quarter above US levels. Then there's a big jump to Japan, Switzerland and South Korea, where the $50 basket climbs past $80. South Korea tops the list, with a US basket costing about $88.

Why "cheap country" doesn't always mean "cheap groceries"

Richer economies usually cost more, with interesting exceptions

The broad pattern won't surprise frequent travelers. According to the World Bank's analysis of ICP 2021 price levels, overall price levels tend to be lower in economies with lower incomes per person. As economies grow, wages rise, services cost more and prices climb with them. That explains much of the table: most of the lower-price group are middle-income economies, and most of the higher-price group are wealthy ones.

Food doesn't follow that script perfectly, though. The ICP also measures the price level for everything households buy, so we can compare the grocery aisle with the rest of the economy, all relative to the US.

China: groceries at 112, but household spending overall at just 71. Food there is relatively expensive compared with most other things people buy.
South Korea: groceries at 175, household spending at 93. Korea's overall prices sit a little below the US, yet its grocery prices are the highest in our set.
Japan: groceries at 164, household spending at 106. The same idea, a bit less extreme.
Canada: groceries at 125, household spending at 100. Overall prices matched the US in 2021, but the grocery aisle ran a quarter higher.
United Kingdom: groceries at 95, household spending at 96. Almost perfectly in step.

This is one of the most useful things the data can tell you. A country's reputation for being "cheap" or "expensive" is usually about hotels, meals out, transit and rent. The grocery aisle can tell a different story.

Price differences inside a single country can be meaningful too. Our state-by-state look at the real cost of eating healthy in every state shows how much grocery bills vary within the US alone.

The aisle-by-aisle heatmap

Where every country sits, category by category

The ICP splits groceries into ten categories, and each gets its own price level. The table below shows all of them, rebased so the US equals 100 in every column. Numbers below 100 mean that category was cheaper than in the US, and numbers above 100 mean it was dearer. Countries are listed from the lowest overall grocery price level to the highest.

Country	Overall	Bread & cereals	Meat	Fish	Milk, cheese & eggs	Oils & fats	Fruit	Vegetables	Sugar & sweets	Other foods	Non-alcoholic drinks
India	50	50	60	44	63	105	48	27	52	60	67
Egypt	55	58	67	48	77	109	45	24	57	55	66
Russia	58	51	53	58	73	91	56	41	70	60	76
Türkiye	64	62	54	69	85	107	60	41	67	66	61
Brazil	69	78	57	56	85	117	65	55	71	90	73
Poland	73	74	63	91	69	96	76	65	79	74	82
Indonesia	76	75	73	49	101	163	84	57	93	90	80
Mexico	86	108	74	94	89	127	72	69	118	81	82
United Kingdom	95	91	93	90	90	103	107	75	89	116	116
Spain	98	110	94	98	94	102	102	84	108	109	95
Netherlands	98	93	108	94	89	125	101	84	90	99	109
United States	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
Germany	105	110	118	128	91	105	121	95	83	107	90
Italy	106	120	119	106	100	94	119	88	98	127	76
France	111	111	133	117	89	118	141	99	89	107	90
China	112	117	103	92	166	173	126	63	140	143	122
Canada	125	124	124	115	151	130	133	112	117	152	97
Australia	127	135	109	108	143	140	142	116	130	122	135
Japan	164	176	164	121	163	190	233	171	167	177	118
Switzerland	166	174	244	195	141	195	124	129	128	173	129
South Korea	175	169	235	120	194	219	198	165	133	167	148

Source: Daily Vitality calculation from World Bank ICP 2021. "Other foods" is the ICP's "food products not elsewhere classified" category, which includes items such as sauces, condiments, spices and baby food.

The vegetable surprise

Scan down the vegetable column and something jumps out. Most of those numbers are well below 100. In 15 of our 20 countries, vegetables cost less than in the US. Only Canada, Australia, Switzerland, South Korea and Japan were dearer.

That's not because other countries are unusually cheap. It's because the US is unusually expensive. Measured against the world average, the US vegetable price level in 2021 was 178, the highest of any food category in the American grocery cart. In the ICP data, American shoppers paid well above the global average for vegetables, even though US groceries overall weren't dramatically out of line with other wealthy countries.

The contrasts are striking. Vegetables in Egypt came in at 24 on our scale, and India at 27, roughly a quarter of the US price level. Even China, whose overall grocery level sits above the US, priced vegetables at just 63.

If you've ever noticed how much produce prices move through the year at home, our month-by-month look at in-season versus off-season produce shows how the calendar shapes what Americans pay.

The cooking-oil mirror image

Now look at the oils and fats column. It runs almost the opposite way. Against the world average, the US price level for oils and fats was just 81, making it the cheapest category in the American cart relative to the rest of the world.

That's why oil flips the script in so many lower-price countries. India, Egypt, Türkiye, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia are all well below US grocery prices overall, yet each one charged more than the US for oils and fats. Indonesia is the most dramatic example: groceries overall at 76, oils and fats at 163.

Put the two findings side by side and you have the core lesson of the heatmap. The same $50 can go twice as far in one aisle and half as far in the next, depending on where you're standing.

The biggest swings

A few more cells worth pausing on:

Meat in Switzerland (244) and South Korea (235): the two most expensive cells in the entire table, well over double the US level.
Fruit in Japan (233): famously pricey, and the data confirms it.
Milk, cheese and eggs in China (166): far above the US, even though China's vegetables are among the cheapest in the table.
Fish in India (44) and Indonesia (49): less than half the US level.

The aisle that flips the ranking, country by country

When one category runs against the tide

For each country, we looked for the category that runs opposite to its overall grocery price level: an aisle that costs more than the US in a cheaper country, or less than the US in a pricier one. Here's what we found.

Country	Overall (US = 100)	The aisle that runs the other way
India	50	Oils and fats at 105; vegetables are the cheapest at 27
Egypt	55	Oils and fats at 109
Russia	58	No flip; closest is oils and fats at 91
Türkiye	64	Oils and fats at 107
Brazil	69	Oils and fats at 117
Poland	73	No flip; closest is oils and fats at 96
Indonesia	76	Oils and fats at 163; milk, cheese and eggs at 101
Mexico	86	Oils and fats at 127; sugar and sweets at 118; bread and cereals at 108
United Kingdom	95	Non-alcoholic drinks and "other foods," both 116; fruit at 107
Spain	98	Bread and cereals at 110
Netherlands	98	Oils and fats at 125; non-alcoholic drinks at 109; meat at 108
Germany	105	Sugar and sweets at 83; milk, cheese and eggs at 91
Italy	106	Non-alcoholic drinks at 76; vegetables at 88
France	111	Milk, cheese and eggs at 89; sugar and sweets at 89; drinks at 90
China	112	Vegetables at 63; fish at 92
Canada	125	Non-alcoholic drinks at 97, the one aisle below the US
Australia	127	No flip; closest is fish at 108
Japan	164	No flip; closest is non-alcoholic drinks at 118
Switzerland	166	No flip; closest is fruit at 124
South Korea	175	No flip; closest is fish at 120

Two patterns stand out. In the lower-price countries, the flip is almost always oils and fats. In the pricier European countries, it tends to be dairy, sweets or drinks. Six countries never cross the line at all: Russia and Poland were cheaper than the US in every aisle, while Australia, Japan, Switzerland and South Korea were dearer in every one.

Tip

If you're curious about a trip's grocery budget, the category rows can be more useful than the headline number. A traveler who mostly buys fresh produce in Italy would face a different bill than one stocking up on juice and cheese, even though the country's overall level sits close to the US.

Protein aisles are where the gaps get widest, and comparing protein prices is something we do at home, too. Our ranking of the best protein per dollar applies the same cost-per-unit thinking to the US grocery aisle.

Reading 2021 prices in 2026

Why the data stops in 2021

You might wonder why a 2026 article uses 2021 prices. The answer is that the ICP is a huge, once-every-few-years survey, and 2021 is its most recent completed round. The World Bank released those results in May 2024, and the next round, covering 2024, isn't out yet. In its report to the United Nations, the World Bank said ICP 2024 results are expected in 2027. Until then, 2021 is the latest official benchmark for comparing food price levels worldwide.

Currencies have moved a lot

Because these comparisons use market exchange rates, currency swings change the dollar figures. Some of those swings since 2021 have been large. The dollar averaged about 110 Japanese yen in 2021. According to the Federal Reserve's exchange rate release for September 18, 2026, it bought nearly 157.

The South Korean won went from about 1,144 per dollar to about 1,388 over the same stretch. The Indian rupee went from about 74 to about 96, and the Canadian dollar from about 1.25 to 1.40.

Warning

A stronger dollar makes other countries look cheaper at the register, but local prices have also risen since 2021, at different speeds in different places. We haven't tried to estimate a 2026 version of this ranking. The two forces pull in opposite directions, and only a new benchmark can settle them.

What $50 meant in 2021 versus now

At home, the change is easier to pin down. US grocery prices rose 23.7% between August 2021 and August 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' food-at-home index. So the $50 basket in this article would cost roughly $62 at a US store today. The international comparisons still show the relative picture: which countries sat above or below the US, and by roughly how much, when all of them were measured at the same moment.

For a longer view of how the same $50 has stretched and shrunk over time, see our look at what $50 of groceries bought in 1995 versus today.

About the Author

Angela Nightingale

Senior Editor

Angela Nightingale is a Senior Editor at Daily Vitality with over two decades of experience in digital publishing and health and wellness content. She specializes in turning complex, often-confusing health topics into clear, calm, and practical guidance that respects the reader's intelligence. Her work focuses on helping people feel informed and confident — never overwhelmed or alarmed — as they make everyday decisions about how they eat, move, rest, and age.

Meet Our Team Editorial Standards

FAQ

Not exactly. The ICP compares national average prices for comparable items that matter in each country's spending. It doesn't price one identical shopping list in every country, so the $50 figure is a translation of overall price levels rather than a literal receipt.

From the World Bank's International Comparison Program, 2021 round. It's a global price survey run with national statistical agencies in 176 participating economies. We pulled the figures directly from the World Bank's public database and did the math ourselves.

They're the 20 largest economies by household consumption spending in the ICP 2021 data, not counting the US. We used a fixed rule so that no country was included or left out to make a point.

The ICP category "food and non-alcoholic beverages." It covers bread and cereals, meat, fish, dairy and eggs, oils and fats, fruit, vegetables, sugar and sweets, other food products, and drinks such as coffee, tea, juice, soft drinks and water. Alcohol isn't included.

No. A price level index compares the price of comparable goods across countries at market exchange rates. It doesn't account for what people earn, what they typically buy or how much they spend on housing and services. It answers "how expensive are groceries there, in dollars?" and nothing broader.

The data shows the price level, not the reason. The ICP measured the US vegetable price level at about 178 on the world scale in 2021, the highest of any American food category. Explaining why would take information on farming, imports, labor and retail that this dataset doesn't include.

Not very. The World Bank cautions against over-reading gaps between countries whose price levels are close. Spain (98.3) and the Netherlands (98.4) are effectively tied, as are several other neighbors in the table.

Yes. The next ICP round, for 2024, is expected in 2027, and the World Bank plans to revise the 2021 figures at the same time. When it's released, the ranking and heatmap can be rebuilt with the same method.

Yes. For the eight European countries it covers, Eurostat's 2021 food price levels put them in the same order as our ICP-based results, and within about two points once both are expressed relative to each other.

Sources

World Bank. (2024). International Comparison Program 2021 database (price level indices, purchasing power parities and exchange rates). Retrieved from https://databank.worldbank.org/source/icp-2021
World Bank. (2024). ICP 2021: Price levels. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/ICP2021_DataViz_5
World Bank. (2025). International Comparison Program 2021 Methodology Overview. Retrieved from https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/c74e68c6b6a87095e14da36f31f99c5b-0050022025/original/ICP-2021-Methodology-for-web-FINAL.pdf

Show 6 more sources

World Bank. (n.d.). International Comparison Program (ICP): Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/faq
World Bank. (2024, May 30). Global purchasing power parities data released for 2021 [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/30/global-purchasing-power-parities-data-released-for-2021
United Nations Statistical Commission. (2025). Report of the World Bank on the International Comparison Program (56th session). Retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/UNSDWebsite/statcom/session_56/documents/2025-30-ICP-E.pdf
Eurostat. (2025). Purchasing power parities, price level indices, nominal and real expenditures (prc_ppp_ind). Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/prc_ppp_ind/default/table?lang=en
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2026). H.10 Foreign Exchange Rates (release of September 21, 2026). Retrieved from https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h10/current/
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food at home, U.S. city average (CUUR0000SAF11). Retrieved from https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SAF11

Key Takeaways

•At 2021 prices and exchange rates, a grocery run that costs $50 in the US would cost about $25 in India and about $88 in South Korea, with Canada at roughly $63.
•The ranking shifts by aisle: the US is unusually expensive for vegetables and unusually cheap for cooking oils and fats, so many "cheap" countries charge more than the US for oil.
•These are the latest official benchmark figures, and currencies and prices have moved a lot since 2021, so they show the general pattern rather than today's checkout totals.