Grocery Budget Calculator for Europe

Almost every grocery budget calculator online is built on the USDA Food Plans — American households, American prices, dollars. If you live in Europe, those numbers are close to meaningless.

This one uses Eurostat's food price levels for 30 European countries, so a household in Bucharest and one in Copenhagen get genuinely different answers.

Typical monthly grocery budget in Germany

€477

about €238 per person, per month

Careful

€358

Typical

€477

Comfortable

€667

Food costs 3% more in Germany than the EU average. Shown in euro for comparability, including for countries outside the euro area.

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Cite or embed this: Grocery Budget Calculator, Portofelo. Source: Eurostat food price levels, 30 countries. Last updated 30 August 2026.

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How the number is worked out

The starting point is what EU households actually spend. Eurostat puts household expenditure on food and non-alcoholic beverages at €2,240 per person in 2022. Food prices then rose 18.2% between 2022 and 2025, so that figure is uprated to current prices using the EU food price index — giving a baseline of roughly €221 per person per month.

That baseline is then adjusted by your country's food price level. Eurostat indexes these against an EU average of 100: Switzerland sits at 161, Luxembourg at 126, Germany at 103, Spain at 95, Poland at 86, Romania at 75. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive country in the list is more than double.

Finally it scales for your household. Children under 14 count as roughly 0.7 of an adult, and small households get a modest uplift because buying for one costs more per head than buying for four.

To be clear about what's what: the spending baseline, the inflation uprating and the country price levels are all Eurostat figures. The household-size scaling is our own estimate applied on top of them, and it can't capture regional variation inside a country.

Using the result properly

A budget you consistently miss isn't a budget. If the "typical" figure is well below what you actually spend, the useful question isn't how to force your spending down to it — it's which part of the gap is prices and which part is habits. Those need completely different fixes, and only itemised spending tells them apart.

If your bill has climbed without your shopping changing, that's the more likely explanation: EU food prices are about 35% higher than in 2020 and never returned to where they were.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I spend on groceries per month?

Across the EU, households spend roughly €220 per person per month on food and non-alcoholic beverages, but the range is wide: the same shopping costs about 26% less in Romania than the EU average and about 26% more in Luxembourg. Household size matters too, because smaller households pay more per person. Use the calculator above for a figure adjusted to your country and household rather than a single European average.

Why do most grocery budget calculators give American figures?

Because nearly all of them are built on the USDA Food Plans, which are published in dollars for US households and reflect US prices and shopping habits. Those numbers don't transfer to Europe, where food price levels differ by more than 70% between the cheapest and most expensive countries. This calculator uses Eurostat data instead.

What percentage of income should go on groceries?

Food and non-alcoholic beverages account for about 13.6% of total household spending across the EU, though that share ranges from roughly 9% in Luxembourg to 25% in Romania. Note that this is a share of spending rather than income — as a share of take-home pay the figure is usually lower, because spending excludes what you save.

Why is my grocery bill higher than it was a few years ago?

Because food prices rose sharply and never came back down. The EU food price index went from 109.9 in 2020 to 147.95 in 2025, an increase of about 34.6% for the same basket. Inflation falling to around 2% means prices are rising slowly from that higher level, not returning to it.

Is this calculator accurate for my country?

The country adjustment comes from Eurostat's price level index for food, so the relative differences between countries are official figures. The household-size scaling is our own estimate applied on top, and regional variation within a country — city versus rural, for instance — isn't captured. Treat the result as a well-grounded starting point, then compare it against your own receipts.

Sources