Spain: an expensive or cheap country compared to the rest of the world?

When summer arrives many people share the same habit: comparing the price of beer on the beach with what we would pay in another destination and drawing hasty conclusions about whether “everything is sky-high” or if, in reality, we live in an oasis of reasonable prices. 

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The report Mapping the World’s Prices 2026, prepared by the Deutsche Bank Research Institute, allows us to go beyond intuition. In its tenth edition, the study analyzes 69 cities around the world — from Abu Dhabi to Zurich — and offers a detailed snapshot of salaries, rents, leisure, and transportation. Spain is represented by Madrid and Barcelona, and the data paints a very clear picture: the country is neither among the most expensive nor the cheapest in the world. Life is, with nuances, in the middle.

The report, which expresses all prices in dollars, does not aim to portray “the most relevant cities in the world” in a broad demographic or geopolitical sense, but to offer a summary of the “most relevant” capitals for the financial world, according to the authors. That is, it is a selection designed for investors and bank clients, with an obvious bias towards financial centers in developed markets. Despite this, the sample remains broad and diverse enough to place Spanish prices in a useful global context.

The most revealing indicator of any international price comparison is not the price itself, but purchasing power. The average net monthly salary in Madrid is 2,509 dollars (2,173 euros) and in Barcelona 2,394 dollars (2,074 euros), below the average of the 69 cities in the study, which is around 2,911 dollars. 

To put these figures into perspective: Zurich leads the global salary table with 8,363 net dollars per month, more than three times the average Madrid salary, while at the opposite end, Cairo closes the ranking with barely 220 dollars a month.

In housing, the pattern repeats with interesting nuances. The square meter to buy an apartment in downtown Madrid costs 9,136 dollars (7,913 euros), slightly below the global average (about 9,214 dollars), while Barcelona is somewhat more affordable, with 7,565 dollars per square meter (6,553 euros). Compared to Hong Kong — the most expensive city in the world to buy housing, with 27,753 dollars per square meter — or Cairo — the cheapest, with only 915 dollars — Spain moves in a reasonable middle ground. 

But the jump compared to a decade ago is notable and what causes concern. In 2016 the square meter cost 4,714 dollars in Madrid (4,083 euros) and 4,595 dollars in Barcelona (3,980 euros), implying a cumulative increase of 93.8% in the capital and 64.6% in the Catalan city, well above the salary increase in the same period. The average net salary in Madrid was 1,727 dollars (1,497 euros) and in Barcelona 1,638 dollars (1,420 euros), representing a cumulative increase of 45.3% and 46.2% respectively. In other words, buying housing has become significantly more difficult in relative terms to salary, especially in Madrid.

The rent for a three-bedroom apartment downtown costs 2,843 dollars monthly in Madrid (2,463 euros) and 2,695 in Barcelona (2,334 euros), again very close to the global average of 2,948 dollars, and light years away from New York, the most expensive city on the planet to rent, with 8,873 dollars per month. And again, the picture from a decade ago is uncomfortable. In 2016 that same three-bedroom apartment cost 1,606 dollars in Madrid (1,391 euros) and 1,469 dollars in Barcelona (1,295.78 euros), which shows a cumulative increase of 77% and 83% respectively.

 The rent for a one-bedroom apartment has risen even faster: 83% in Madrid and 95% in Barcelona since 2016, practically doubling its price in a decade. Interestingly, in the one-bedroom apartment segment, Barcelona (1,669 dollars or 1,445.62 euros) slightly surpasses Madrid (1,596 dollars or 1,382.39 euros) and the global average (1,544 dollars), probably reflecting the tourist pressure and limited supply that the Catalan city suffers.

Where Spain does move away from comfort is in mortgages. Paying a mortgage accounts for 73% of disposable income in Madrid and 64% in Barcelona, figures that are below the delirious extreme of Buenos Aires (511% of income, a product of Argentine hyperinflation) but also far from the comfortable 22% in Chicago.

If there is one category where Spain clearly detaches itself from the global average — for the worse — it is fuel. The study takes as reference a price for a liter of gasoline of 1.77 dollars in Madrid and 1.73 in Barcelona (1.53 and 1.50 euros), figures around which prices moved in spring, above the global average of 1.62 dollars. 

To contextualize the extremes: in Hong Kong, the most expensive city in the world in this regard, at the time of comparison the liter reached 3.88 dollars — 8.6 times more than in Cairo, where it costs barely 0.45 dollars —. It should be noted that fuel prices are volatile and therefore can have strong fluctuations in a short period of time.

On the opposite side, Spain fits the stereotype. Here, drinking and eating out is cheaper than in most of the world. A 0.5-liter beer costs in Madrid 1.23 dollars (1.07 euros), ranking, among the most affordable, 63rd out of 69 cities. A mid-range glass of wine costs 8 dollars both in Madrid and Barcelona (6.93 euros), well below the global average of 11.79 dollars and far from Singapore (23.2 dollars, the most expensive city in the world for wine). 

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The report itself highlights Rome as the city with the cheapest wine on the planet (4.6 dollars), followed by Lisbon, and explicitly mentions Spain among the “cheap places for wine,” along with Buenos Aires, Budapest, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and even Frankfurt.

The cappuccino follows the same pattern: 3.15 dollars in Madrid and 3.14 in Barcelona (2.73 and 2.72 euros), below the global average (4.15 dollars) and far from the leader, Zurich, where a latte costs 7.13 dollars — more than double that in either of the two Spanish cities —.

Eating out confirms the trend. A three-course dinner for two people in a mid-range restaurant costs 69 dollars both in Madrid and Barcelona (59.77 euros), below the global average of 74 dollars, and far from Zurich, the most expensive city in the world to eat out (149 dollars for the same dinner). At the other extreme, Jakarta offers the cheapest food in the sample, with only 17 dollars.

However, not everything is cheap in Spanish dining. It is among the most expensive countries for Coca-Cola. Also, the McDonald’s McMenu costs 11.7 dollars in Madrid (10.13 euros) but 13.7 dollars in Barcelona (11.87 euros) — the latter well above the global average of 10.46 dollars —, which places the Catalan capital among the most expensive places in the world to eat fast food, near the top 12 of the global ranking. 

The undisputed leader in this category is Tel Aviv, where the same menu reaches 20.9 dollars, after having experienced one of the most striking price increases on the planet in the last decade, driven by the strength of the Israeli shekel.

The rest of the report’s categories — buying, a pack of cigarettes, jeans, a movie ticket, a gym membership — confirm the pattern. Spain moves, with few exceptions, in the intermediate range of the 69 cities analyzed, between positions 20 and 50 in the ranking depending on the variable. 

Neither Madrid nor Barcelona ever appear among the five most expensive or the five cheapest cities in the world in any of the study’s categories, something that repeatedly happens with cities like Zurich, Geneva, Tel Aviv, New York, or Singapore on the expensive side, and with Cairo, Delhi, Jakarta, or Bombay on the cheap side.

Public transport in Barcelona stands out for its relative affordability, a single ticket costs 3.03 dollars and the monthly pass 26 (22.52 euros), placing it among the cheapest cities in Western Europe to get around by bus or metro, while in Madrid they cost 1.72 and 40 dollars (34.65 euros). For comparison: London is by far the most expensive city in the world for a monthly transport pass (268 dollars), while Luxembourg, which made it free, tops the table of lowest prices.

A curious detail provided by the report is the price of the iPhone. In Spain, the iPhone 17 Pro 256 GB costs 1,531 dollars (1,326 euros), 130% of the US price, and above what it would cost in Switzerland (1,385 dollars, 117% of the US price), even though the Swiss country is by far the most expensive in the world for almost any other product or service. 

The explanation, according to Deutsche Bank, lies in taxation: the Swiss VAT is 8.1%, one of the lowest in Europe, while Spain applies a general rate of 21%, which artificially raises the price of fixed-price products like Apple phones. At the opposite extreme, Turkey is the most expensive country in the world to buy an iPhone (2.2 times the US price), a result of high tariffs and the historic collapse of the Turkish lira.

If anything is clear from the Deutsche Bank report, it is that Spain — at least through its two major urban representatives, Madrid and Barcelona — does not fit into any of the extreme narratives that usually circulate about the country. It is not the cheap destination in Europe that some long for, nor has it entered the league of unaffordable cities like London, New York, or the Swiss capitals. 

It is, almost with mathematical precision, in the average of the developed world. More than answering the question of whether Spain is expensive or cheap, the data forces us to ask another: expensive for what? A cappuccino can cost less than half than in Zurich, a bottle of wine costs almost a third of that in Singapore, and Barcelona’s public transport is among the cheapest in the ranking. But buying a home, filling the tank, or acquiring the latest iPhone tells a different story.

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