A Big Mac in Switzerland costs roughly $11. The same burger in South Africa costs about $4. Same beef patty, same sesame bun, same two slices of cheese. Different price tag — and the gap, mapped onto the world above, is the cleanest visual the Big Mac Index produces.
The map colors each tracked country by its PPP valuation against the US dollar: how much more or less a Big Mac costs in USD-equivalent terms than the US benchmark of $7.49. Red countries have an overvalued currency — the burger costs more in dollar terms than in the US. Green countries have an undervalued currency — the burger costs less. Gold sits within ±10% of fair value.
The same sandwich at radically different prices is the cleanest debasement signal we have.
How to read the map
The Big Mac Index uses a fixed real-world basket — a single product, made to a standardized recipe, sold in 100+ countries — to measure purchasing-power parity (PPP) across currencies. Because the burger itself does not change between markets, any difference in its USD-equivalent price reveals something about the local currency.
Currencies on the red end (Switzerland, Norway, eurozone in places) are overvalued vs the US dollar in PPP terms. That can mean genuine real-wage differences (Swiss labor and rent are expensive) or genuine currency overshoot. The index alone can't distinguish — but it flags the gap.
Currencies on the green end (Japan, South Africa, Indonesia historically) are undervalued. The yen is the textbook case: weak FX means a Tokyo Big Mac costs ~$4 in USD even though its yen price has risen 50% since 2010. Japanese tourists abroad notice this immediately.
Why a single-burger basket is more honest than CPI
Official inflation indexes — CPI in the US, HICP in the eurozone — are constructed indexes. Their values depend on basket reweighting, hedonic adjustments (treating a faster computer as a price drop), and post-publication revisions. A 2010 Big Mac and a 2025 Big Mac, by contrast, are the same sandwich. Nobody adjusts the burger.
That makes the Big Mac narrow, but in one specific way more honest: it cannot be retroactively revised. The map above is what the world actually charges for a fixed real-world basket, in local currencies, today. Compare that to CPI's smoothed numbers, and the gap is exactly the wedge between engineered inflation and real-world basket inflation. We unpack this in detail in The Big Mac vs. CPI: A More Honest Inflation Gauge.
Data and methodology
Prices are scraped daily from public McDonald's menus and food-delivery platforms (Uber Eats, Glovo, Grubhub) across multiple cities per country. The country-level price is the median across all sampled cities. Local-currency prices are converted to USD at live exchange rates from major FX feeds. Read the full methodology.
We currently track 9+ countries with daily updates. Coverage is growing — see the country directory on the homepage for the live list. Per-country narrative analysis lives at /country/{slug}; per-currency PPP analysis lives at /currency/{code}; the full PPP calculator compares any two tracked currencies.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the most expensive Big Mac in the world?
Switzerland holds the world's most expensive Big Mac, at approximately
$11.36 USD-equivalent (CHF 8.90). The Swiss franc is the strongest major currency vs the burger benchmark — overvalued by roughly 50% per the Big Mac Index. The price reflects high Swiss real wages and SNB monetary discipline rather than currency mispricing. See
the Switzerland country page for daily detail.
Where is the cheapest Big Mac in the world?
Among currently-tracked countries, South Africa has the cheapest Big Mac at about $4.09 USD-equivalent (ZAR 68.30) — undervalued by roughly 45% per the Big Mac Index. Other low-USD-price countries include Japan (yen weakness), Indonesia, and India (where the burger uses chicken instead of beef and is called the Maharaja Mac).
How is the Big Mac price determined for each country?
We collect actual menu prices from McDonald's locations and delivery platforms across multiple cities per country, updated daily. Local-currency prices are converted to USD at live exchange rates. The country price is the median across all sampled cities. This differs from The Economist's biannual Big Mac Index, which surveys once or twice per year.
Why does a Big Mac cost different amounts in different countries?
Big Mac price differences reflect three things: local wages (labor cost), local rent (real-estate cost), and currency strength against the dollar. The cleanest signal among these is currency strength — which is why the Big Mac Index uses the burger as a proxy for purchasing-power parity (PPP) across currencies. A burger that costs $11 in Switzerland and $4 in Japan suggests the Swiss franc is overvalued and the yen is undervalued vs the dollar.
What does PPP overvaluation mean on the map?
A red-shaded country has a Big Mac that costs more in USD than the US Big Mac — meaning the local currency is overvalued vs the dollar per the Big Mac Index. A green-shaded country has a cheaper-in-USD burger, meaning the currency is undervalued. Gold/neutral indicates fair value (within ~10% of the US benchmark). Grey countries are not yet tracked in our daily data.
Why are some countries grey on the map?
Grey countries are not currently tracked in our daily data feed. McDonald's operates in 100+ countries; our scraper actively ingests live menu prices from a growing subset. Each country page (e.g.,
Argentina,
Turkey) has editorial coverage even where live data is not yet flowing.
Is the Big Mac Index a reliable indicator?
The Big Mac Index is most reliable as a directional PPP signal across time within one country, less reliable for snapshot comparisons across very different economies. A high USD-equivalent Big Mac price can reflect strong real wages or expensive non-tradeables (like Switzerland), not just currency overvaluation. The index is best used as a complementary indicator alongside CPI, official exchange rates, and central bank data.
Live prices scraped daily from public McDonald's menus and delivery platforms.
World map data: world-atlas (CC0).
For methodology see /methodology; for the PPP calculator see /calculator; for editorial analysis see Big Mac vs. CPI.
This site is independent and not affiliated with The Economist or McDonald's.
