Switzerland Is Still The Most Expensive Place In The World To Eat Out

The $20 that buys one inexpensive restaurant meal in the U.S. buys about three in Japan, nine in India, and 12 in Bangladesh.

In eight European countries, led by Switzerland, it would not cover even one.

All 98 prices come from Numbeo, accessed on August 24, 2026.

Numbeo’s prices are crowdsourced from users reporting what they paid locally and converted to U.S. dollars at market exchange rates. The prices represent a meal at an inexpensive restaurant by local convention, so the ranking compares the lower-cost end of each country’s restaurant market rather than one identical dish priced 98 times.

The roster moves between pulls: Israel, Luxembourg, and Russia carried no data on the access date and are absent here, though they appear in other pulls of the same dataset.

Switzerland Is the Most Expensive

At $31.20, Switzerland is a clear outlier, costing nearly a third more than second-place Norway at $23.60.

The table, via Visual Capitalist’s Sofie Gilbert, ranks all 98 countries and territories from most to least expensive, including the 38 the graphic leaves out.

The 38 countries omitted from the graphic, priced between $12.88 and $6.33, are mostly in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The global median of $9.35 falls between Turkey and Slovakia.

Several wealthy economies also fall in this middle range, including Singapore at $11.82, Hong Kong at $8.29, and South Korea at $7.21. Every Gulf state does as well, from the UAE at $9.26 to Saudi Arabia at $6.65.

Europe Dominates the Most Expensive Countries

Seventeen of the 20 most expensive countries are European; the exceptions are the United States, Canada, and Australia. Behind Switzerland, the Nordic and Benelux countries bunch tightly: Norway at $23.60, Denmark at $23.43, Belgium and the Netherlands at $23.36, and Ireland at $23.35 span just 25 cents.

Currency conversion helps explain two visible clusters. Eight countries at $17.52, including France, Germany, and Spain, and five at $14.01, including Portugal and Croatia, are eurozone members reporting round local prices of €15 and €12.

Europe is far from uniform, however. Hungary sits at $12.88 and Bulgaria at $11.94, while the continent’s spread runs more than fivefold from Switzerland to Kosovo at $5.84.

The U.S. Ranks Ninth

The U.S. ranks ninth at $20.00, making it the only non-European country in the top 10. Italy sits just above it at $20.19.

Austria ranks 10th at $18.68, followed by Canada at $18.11, about 10% cheaper than the U.S.

Japan Is the Cheapest G7 Country

Japan ranks 69th of 98 at $6.29, below the global median and far cheaper than any other G7 economy. The next-cheapest members, France and Germany, cost nearly three times as much.

The low price does not signal a thin restaurant sector: Japan ranks third worldwide with 351 Michelin-starred restaurants, behind only France and Italy.

Japan also undercuts Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Among its high-income neighbors, only Taiwan, at $4.71, is cheaper. Japan’s placement reflects what a visitor holding dollars would pay, not what the meal represents to a household earning yen.

Asia and Africa Have the Cheapest Meals

Indonesia at $1.70 and Bolivia at $1.73 sit just above Bangladesh at the bottom. Eleven of the 20 cheapest countries are in Asia and five are in Africa, where Nigeria is the cheapest entry at $1.85.

South Asia clusters near the bottom, with Nepal at $1.96, India at $2.09, and Pakistan at $2.16. China comes in at $2.98.

Six of the world’s 10 most populous countries rank among the 20 cheapest, meaning some of the lowest restaurant prices in the dataset apply to countries containing a substantial share of the world’s population.

If you enjoyed this visualization, check out The World’s Best Cities for Food on the Voronoi app.