Walking prices, country by country

Where the sample comes from

Every business measured, plotted at suburb level. Around thirty suburbs, cities and regional towns per country are drawn fresh each quarter and no single metro contributes more than six, which is what stops this being a few salons in one city. A larger dot is a suburb where more than one measured business trades; nothing here identifies a business.

What a regular customer actually pays

The headline median is the casual rate, always. This is the other half: among the businesses that publish a prepaid pack, the median casual rate against the median best per-visit rate the same businesses offer. Both figures come from that group only, so the gap is a real discount rather than an artefact of comparing two different sets of businesses. Each row stays in its own currency because it is a within-country comparison.

What the money actually buys

An exchange rate tells you what a currency trades for, not what it buys at home. Converted at the market rate the cheapest market above can look far cheaper than it really is. These figures divide each price by that country's purchasing power parity factor instead, which strips the currency out. International dollars are a unit for comparing, never a price to charge.

United Statesn=20A$27.80A$20 to A$35United Kingdomn=22A$15.68A$11.40 to A$28.51Canadan=14A$24.99A$17.45 to A$38.87

A positive figure means the Australian dollar currently buys more of that country's goods than its price levels justify, so their prices look cheaper to an Australian than they feel to a local. PPP conversion factor, households and NPISHs final consumption expenditure, World Bank International Comparison Program, retrieved 2026-08-10. Inflation is inflation, consumer prices (annual %) from the same publisher, for the year shown.

What everyday things cost in the same five countries

The section above is the arithmetic. This is the same idea you can check yourself. A loaf of bread, a litre of milk and a litre of petrol, bought the same way in each country and priced in Australian dollars at the same rate as everything else on this page. Read the rows against each other before you read any single one: the country with the cheapest bread and milk also has the dearest petrol by a distance, which is why one price from overseas can never tell you whether a market is dear.

United KingdomA$5.45all three

United StatesA$6.02all three

AustraliaA$6.54all three

New ZealandA$6.66all three

CanadaA$7.24all three

Bread is the cheapest standard sliced white loaf, priced per 700g because pack sizes run from 567g in the United States to 800g in Britain. Milk is the cheapest plain whole or full cream milk in the country’s standard two-litre pack, priced per litre. Petrol is one litre of standard unleaded, 91 or regular, at the advertised pump price including tax. Each petrol figure is that country's official national average, published by the Australian Institute of Petroleum, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Statistics Canada and New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, for the period each one states. Bread and milk are the cheapest qualifying item at that country's largest supermarket chains on 10 August 2026, taken from the retailers' own published prices. That is a shelf price, not a national average, and the two are different statistics: an official all-retailer average for a 675g Canadian loaf is C$3.61 against C$2.48 for the same size at a discounter, so the two are never mixed inside one row. Pack sizes differ by country and every figure is normalised to one loaf per 700g and one litre of milk, which is arithmetic on the local price and nothing to do with the currency. Converted at the Reserve Bank of Australia daily exchange rates, quoted 2026-08-07T16:40:00+10:00. Tax is as published: bread and milk are untaxed in Australia, Britain and Canada, carry GST in New Zealand, and sit before sales tax in the United States. Basket figures are on their own tax basis and are never pooled with the service prices above.

Two items short. beer and coffee were specified for this basket and are not here. No statistics agency in any of the five countries publishes a pub pint or a takeaway coffee, most venues do not publish those prices at all, and an American pint is 473ml against the imperial 568ml. Rather than put up a thin number, they are recorded as outstanding until they can be measured the same way as the rest.

What it costs to deliver that price in Australia

A median is only half the picture. Australian small business costs have risen sharply since March 2020, so the same headline price is a thinner job than it was, and a market that looks dear on the chart above may simply be one where it costs more to open the door.

March 2020 to March 2026, across 2.7 million Australian small businesses. AMP Bank Go Small Business Cost Pressure Index, reported by AAP via Michael West Media on 2026-08-04. These are not our figures and are not mixed into any median on this page. We cannot yet tell you whether Australian prices kept pace: this index has one quarter of price data, and answering that needs a second.