The cost of living in Spain in 2024

The promise of over 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, swims in the beautiful Mediterranean, the welcome of a large expat community — there are many reasons that you may be lured to live on Spain’s shores. And for many, a huge part of the country’s appeal is the lower cost of living. But just how affordable is life in Spain?

We have the answer! Property Guides just published The Cost of Living Overseas Index 2024, a thorough project that researches the cost of living in the most popular countries for international buyers.

The 2024 Index compares the cost of living in 13 countries: the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Those drawn to life in Spain will be pleased to know that out of all 13 of these countries, Spain boasts the most affordable cost of living.

Find the full campaign on Property Guides

Property Guides’ Cost of Living Overseas Index

If you frequently holiday in Spain, you might feel that you have a good sense of things like dining out, travelling to and from the airport, and accommodation in Spain. But the Property Guides Cost of Living Index captures what the price of your day-to-day items are. So, we asked expats to report back to us on the cost of expenses like trips to the dentist, cleaning and travelling.

For now, let’s dig into how Spain scored.

1. Groceries

Luckily, out of the countries we looked at, Spain came out as the most affordable to grab your groceries. To fill your basket with the 17 basic items we analysed, you should expect to pay around £52.23. The same shopping basket in the UK would cost you almost 53% more.

Spanish supermarket prices are considerably cheaper for basic staples of the Spanish diet. They are on the whole cheaper than Spanish markets too, but many Spanish people nevertheless prefer to buy their fresh produce from local markets, often direct from the farmer. Most towns in Spain still have a food market at least once a week, and many have a daily market. You can get very high quality fresh fruit and veg, fish, meat, cheese and hams and cold meats here.

Here are some highlights:

• If you’re planning to bring your pup with you to Spain, you’ll be glad to know that the equivalent of 1kg of Bakers is £1.8 (£4 in the UK).
• Like to follow a meal with a square or two of dark chocolate? You can treat your sweet tooth at a much lower cost, for an equivalent to Green & Blacks, you can expect to pay £1.54.
• And, perhaps, most excitingly of all, bottle of gin would cost you £9.44 in Spain, compared to £25* in the UK.
• Spanish items that are a tad more expensive than they are in the UK include: pineapple, fresh chicken and cod.

Find out more about shopping in Spain here.

2. Travel

While Italy was the most affordable country to travel in, UK expats won’t be disappointed by the lighter on your wallet travel options in Spain.

Takeaways:

• 1 litre of petrol (unleaded, 50 litres) cost £59* in Spain (£77.5 in the UK).
• If you are thinking of heading on a viewing trip to Spain and fancy driving around your potential new neighbourhood, then you can do so affordably. The cost of hiring a small car in Spain for one week (with no insurance or extras) is £73* (238* in the UK).
• But best of all, if you’d like to live car-free in Spain, then the train is a great option. As an hour long return fare would cost you just under £10.

Find out more about travelling in Spain here.

3. Home

For this category, we looked at the cost of hiring a domestic cleaner for two hours, paint and kitchen utensils. Spain came out as the least expensive country.

Here are the key pointers:

• If you’ve been taken by the trend for air fryers and fancy cooking up a feast of your very affordable basket of groceries, then you’ll like knowing that the cost of the latest NINJA Air Fryer is £154* – the same model would cost you £220* in the UK.
• Plus, an Alexa Echo Dot (5^th gen) costs more than double in the UK (£54.99) than it does in Spain (£23.19).
• Given the energy crisis putting such pressure on prices here in the UK, we took the standard price per kilowatt-hour in each country and multiplied it by 100 to give a rough representative cost to heat and power a flat or small house for one week. This was £29* in Spain and £53 in the UK.

4. Healthcare

For healthcare, we looked at the cost of: a basic dentist check-up, nappies, paracetamol and tampons. The differences were the least stark for these, but Spain still came out cheaper, with an overall cost of £30* —  £10 less than in the UK.

Takeaways:

• The UK has the cheapest paracetamol, at 39p (2 more pennies in Spain).
• Check up on your pearly whites for just £18* in Spain.

Find out about an expat’s experience of the Spanish healthcare system here.

5. Leisure

As important as groceries and household goods are, you are going to want to dive headfirst into the wonderful lifestyle that Spain has to offer. And, thankfully, you can do so affordably.

Grabbing spot number one, Spain is the most affordable place for leisure!

Highlights:

• A three-course meal in a local mid-range restaurant will cost you just £15*, £10 cheaper than in the UK.
• Enjoy a croissant for breakfast? It’ll cost you just 77p from an independent coffee shop.
• And at £7, a cinema ticket is less than half the price it is in the UK.

6. Other

In this category, we looked at things you might do every so often: buy a pair of jeans, spend a night at a mid-range hotel and get a men’s haircut.

Clothes shopping in Spain varies from the very cheap to the very expensive, with fewer mid-range options available. There are still plenty of small, independent clothes shops and they will inevitably be more costly than Britain’s national chains. Of course, the service may well be better too. You will find a wide variety of small local boutiques in the local areas, again, ranging in price from bargains to blowing the bank!

Well-known high-street brands like Mango, Zara and H&M are in Spain (indeed some, such as Zara, are Spanish). Big department stores include El Corte Inglés. There are also lower-priced clothing stores, such as C&A, in the cities. Primark has taken off, with nearly 50 stores in Spain.

Key pointers:

• New jeans and a trim would cost a little less than it would in the UK.
• If you’re after a midweek getaway, you can do this for just £59*. Not only is this significantly cheaper than the UK (£182), it was the cheapest out of all 13 countries we looked at.

*rounded to the nearest pound

The Spain Buying Guide is a free, independent resource to help anyone who is looking to buy property in or move to Spain through each critical stage of their property buying journey.

Set up to help our readers avoid the many complexities and pitfalls of buying property in Spain, the guide takes you through each stage of the property buying process, with practical recommendations from our experts who have been through the process themselves.