About Ten Dollar Pick

Ten Dollar Pick is an independent project tracking what $10 USD actually buys across cities worldwide — from a fixed grocery basket to real local experiences, like an hour of Thai massage in Bangkok or a taco crawl in Mexico City.

The premise is simple: price the same 10-item basket (bread, milk, eggs, bananas, bottled water, beer, a cappuccino, rice, chicken breast, and a public transit ticket) in each city, then compare the total to New York City, which is set as the baseline with an index score of 100. A city with a score of 200 means $10 goes roughly twice as far there as it does in New York. Each city page also lists a few real things $10 can actually buy on the ground, to make the number concrete.

This is a small, independently run site — not a company, and not backed by a research team. Prices are researched estimates, not a live feed, and are treated as illustrative rather than exact. For the full explanation of how the basket, scoring, and data sourcing work, see the Methodology page.

Currently the index covers 20 cities, with more added periodically. Spot something wrong, or have a city you'd like to see added? Get in touch.