A quick glance at this year’s Finder’s Starbucks Index would show you that the most expensive place to get a Starbucks ‘tall’ latte is Denmark, at $6.05 in U.S. dollars and the least expensive is Turkey, at $1.78. But those figures are, in reality, only for visitors.
The per capita household income of Danes is just shy of $40,000, while that of Turks is just over $3,000. For a Dane, a latte a day would eat up about 6% of the year’s income, while for a Turk it would take nearly 22% of his earnings.
So, from the point of view of the person who lives there, and not the traveler, that latte is nearly four times as expensive in Turkey than in Denmark!
The Finder’s Index tracks the price of that latte in 76 countries across the globe as an informal comparison of prices, but since it doesn’t include cost-of-living or income data for the countries involved, it’s mainly of use to visitors.
The most expensive ten, in raw numbers:
- Denmark Copenhagen 6.05
- Switzerland Aarau 5.94
- Finland Vantaa 5.4
- Macau Macau 5.21
- Luxembourg Luxembourg 5.18
- Norway Oslo 5.14
- Hong Kong Hong Kong 4.6
- Singapore Singapore 4.5
- Germany Munich 4.39
- Russia Moscow 4.35
And the cheapest:
- Philippines Quezon City $2.69
- Hungary Budapest $2.62
- Brazil Sao Paulo $2.43
- Bulgaria Sofia $2.20
- South Africa Johannesburg $2.18
- Mexico Mexico City $2.15
- Argentina Buenos Aires $2.14
- Colombia Bogota $2.04
- Egypt Cairo (outskirts) $1.95
- Turkey Istanbul $1.78
