Is food in Austria cheaper than in Hungary?

Have you ever been curious about what food costs in different countries? What could people buy in different countries for the same sum of money?

Since the last instalment of their article was quite popular, G7 continued their series. This time they compared the prices of Aldi (Hofer in Austria) and Lidl in Hungary and Austria to see which country is the cheaper.

The Hungarian news site has been making comparisons of prices of essential food products between stores and countries for some time now.

They have gone after the legend that Austrians not only earn more than Hungarians, but the food is cheaper as well.

To conduct the comparison – keep in mind, it is not representative –, they use prices per kilo or litre and sales are excluded. If there are more products in a category, they always use the cheapest. This time they ended up comparing 29 products. In the following charts, you can see how much certain essential products cost in Hungary and Vienna on the same day.

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Food in Hungary vs Austria

G7 have found that in Aldi, seven products of the 29 examined were cheaper than in Hungary (flour, oil, butter, tomato, banana, rice and gouda) while in Lidl’s range, 12 were more affordable than the Hungarian price (oil, butter, tomato, pepper, apple, banana, coffee, rice, spaghetti, onion, gouda, orange).

This is quite a large portion of the examined essential products, but does that mean that food in Austria is cheaper than in Hungary? While it is true that certain products are cheaper in Austria, it does not necessarily imply that shopping altogether would be cheaper too.

The results in Lidl were quite similar. In Hungary, it cost around 9,605 forints (€ 26.68), and in Wien, it was 11,994 forints (€ 33.32).

Conclusion

According to their findings, the overall price difference in the Austrian Hofer (Aldi) was 29.4%, and in the Austrian Lidl, it was 24.9% higher than the price of the shopping in Hungary.

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G7 noted that while it is certainly possible, what is more, pretty easy to find certain products in Austria that are cheaper, but overall, the cost of weekly grocery shopping is still relatively more affordable in Hungary. Although it might not be factually cheaper but is a weekly shopping less demanding on the average person’s salary in Austria or Hungary?

To answer that question, the news site used the median wages of both countries. Hungarian median wage, according to last year’s data and 8% inflation, is around 210,000 forints, or roughly € 583.33. Austrian median wage, however, is 807,000 forints, or approximately € 2220.

Comparing these wages to the price of a shopping, it turns out that while it takes about 4.6% of the Hungarian median wage, it is only 1.5% of the median salary of Austria, says Hvg.

This means that it is almost three times more demanding for a Hungarian to buy the same products.

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Source: G7.hu, Hvg.hu