The Flat White Index
Prices: October 2026 Exchange rates: ECB, 23 Oct 2026

A flat white costs NZ$6.10 in Wellington.

The Economist's Big Mac index asks what a burger says about exchange rates. This asks the same of the drink New Zealand and Australia both claim to have invented. The idea is purchasing-power parity: once converted at market rates, a flat white should cost about the same everywhere. Where it costs less than in Wellington, the local currency looks undervalued against the NZ dollar; where it costs more, overvalued.

Wellington flat white, in US dollars
US$3.47

A light-hearted price comparison, not a currency forecast or financial advice.

A flat white with rosetta latte art in a ceramic cup, seen from above
Photo: Panchanok Juntanarach on Unsplash

Where your flat white is cheap

Each city's price, converted at today's exchange rate and compared with the base. Tap a country or a city for its numbers and sources.

Over- and undervaluation against the NZ dollar

Hover over a country for its numbers. Click for prices, sources and its trend.

Sources: café menus, guides and price surveys (Sources tab); European Central Bank reference rates; IMF World Economic Outlook GDP per person, 2025.

Minutes of work per flat white

Price divided by average economic output per working hour (GDP per person ÷ 2,000 hours). A rough measure of affordability, not a wage.

Against other measures

Does coffee tell the same story as burgers and official inflation? The Big Mac index is The Economist's (July 2026 edition); inflation is the IMF's.

Sources: The Economist Big Mac index (CC BY 4.0); IMF World Economic Outlook inflation; Stats NZ via RNZ.

Price check your café

Paid for a flat white somewhere? Enter the price to see what it implies about the exchange rate.

Example filled in: €4.50, a typical specialty café price in the euro area.

Add a price

Seen a menu? Send the café, the city and the price of a regular flat white. Every submission is checked against the menu before it counts, and the monthly update credits the source, never you.

How the index works

The raw index

Purchasing-power parity says the same thing should cost the same everywhere once converted. Divide a city's price by the base city's price to get the exchange rate that would make them equal, then compare it with the real rate.

valuation = (local price ÷ base price) ÷ actual rate − 1

The GDP-adjusted index

Coffee is cheaper where wages are lower, so poorer countries look undervalued by default. Like The Economist, we fit price against GDP per person and compare each city with the price its income predicts.

ln(US$ price) = a + b × ln(GDP per person)

What counts as a flat white

A regular flat white at a mid-range independent café, usually the median of several menus or a local survey. Where none could be found we use a regular cappuccino, marked in the table. Tick "Flat whites only" to drop those.

One drink is a thin basket. Café prices include rent and wages, which do not trade across borders, and prices in Argentina and Turkey move fast with inflation. Ireland's GDP is inflated by multinational accounting, so Dublin is left out of the fit.

Not to be confused with flatwhiteindex.com, a separate crowdsourced café price list. This index uses one dated, sourced price per city to compare currencies.