How much does a Big Mac cost on average in the United States?

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$5.79. A Big Mac averaged $5.79 in the U.S. as of January 2025, according to The Economist's long-running Big Mac Index. The index was created in 1986 as a tongue-in-cheek way to compare currencies' purchasing power — since a Big Mac is made almost the same way everywhere, its local price is a rough gauge of whether a currency is over- or under-valued. Price it against a meal. A fast-food sandwich sits below a restaurant main and above a supermarket equivalent, which puts it in the single-digit dollars in a wealthy country. Every currency question of this kind is bounded by what the same food costs prepared at home and served at a table. The index in the explanation is the reason this specific price is tracked: because the product is made almost identically everywhere, its local price is a rough gauge of whether a currency is over- or under-valued. It was invented in 1986 as a joke and is now cited in serious economics, because a genuinely standardised good is rare and useful. What it measures is purchasing power parity — how much a currency actually buys locally, rather than what it trades for. Exchange rates and local prices diverge substantially, and a standardised product is the simplest available instrument for measuring that gap without building a full price index.

Source	The Economist, Big Mac Index
Figure refers to	2025
Last checked	September 2, 2026
Unit	dollars

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