How many minutes do we need to afford a cup of coffee in different countries?

Picodi.com analysts checked the value of one cup of coffee expressed in the work time required to afford it in South Africa and other countries. The ranking covers 102 countries.

Among the countries included in the report, coffee costs the most in Denmark ($5.08), Qatar ($5.08) and Hong Kong ($5.06). On the other hand, the lowest price of a cup of cappuccino was noted in Algeria ($0.58), Tunisia ($0.70) and Ukraine ($1.07). However, if we compare the coffee prices and the local wages, the citizens of Andorra, Australia and Switzerland can boast of the most favourable ratio – in those countries, you can afford a cup of coffee in 8–9 minutes.

In South Africa, the average price of a cappuccino is R30.21, which corresponds to 15 minutes of work for an average South African (28^th place). This is shorter than in Qatar (16 min), Malta (17 min) and Hungary (18 min), but longer than in the UK (14 min), the Netherlands (12 min) and the USA (11 min).

Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Nigeria take the last places in the ranking. In Nigeria, for a cup of cappuccino the citizens have to work for over 2 hours, in Indonesia – 1 hour and 42 minutes, and in Sri Lanka a bit over 1.5 hours.

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Methodology and sources

The price of a cup of coffee (cappuccino) used in this report was taken from Numbeo.com, where hundreds of thousands of users from the whole world monitor the prices of services and goods. The time required to afford a cup of coffee was calculated based on the average wages, taken from websites of the official statistical offices, ministries or other local institutions. The prices are up-to-date as of the release of this report. Net wages were calculated with local salary calculators. Monthly wages were divided by 21 (average number of workdays in a month), and then by 60 (number of minutes in an hour). In countries, where statistical offices use weekly wages, the wage was divided by 5 instead of 21.

For currency conversion, we used the average exchange rate data from Google Finance for the period of September 1–23, 2022.

Public use

Both the infographic and the statistical data can be used freely for commercial and non-commercial purposes. We only ask you to credit the author of the research (Picodi.com) with a link to this subpage. In case of any questions, feel free to contact us at research@picodi.com.