Every comparison on this site rests on three decisions: what counts as a price, when two items in two countries count as the same product, and how local currency becomes a comparable number. This page states all three, plus the places where the method breaks down.

1. What counts as a price

We record the national reference price of a single menu item, ordered at the counter, for takeaway or eat-in, before any delivery or service charge. Where an item is sold in several sizes or as both à la carte and a combo, each is stored as a separate option against the same item, so a menu page can show the full range rather than one number.

Taxes follow local convention, because that is how the board is printed. UK, Irish and Australian prices include VAT or GST; United States prices exclude state and local sales tax. This is the single largest source of apparent difference between American and European prices, and it is a presentation difference, not a real one. We flag it wherever a comparison crosses that line.

2. When two items are the same product

The price index only compares items that share a brand and a normalised product name across markets - A Whopper is compared to a Whopper, never to a generic burger. Names are lower-cased and stripped of trademark symbols and size words before matching, and an item must appear in at least four tracked markets before it enters the index at all.

This is conservative on purpose. It means the index misses genuinely comparable products that a brand names differently in different countries, and we accept those misses rather than risk comparing a 100g patty to a 150g one because both are called a cheeseburger.

What the index does not adjust for

Portion size, recipe, included sides, local taxes and purchasing power. A USD price is a conversion, not a measure of affordability. For that, read the wage-adjusted comparisons in the prices and value hub.

3. Currency conversion

Local prices are the stored value and never change when exchange rates move. USD figures are derived at display time from mid-market rates refreshed weekly from a free public rate feed, and the date of the last refresh is shown on the index itself. A price that looks like it jumped 8% may simply be a currency that moved.

4. How current the data is

Menus are re-checked on a rolling basis, and each menu page carries the date its data was last confirmed. Promotional items, limited-time offers and seasonal ranges move fastest and are the most likely to be stale; core menu items move slowly and are the most reliable. We do not invent promotions, and we do not carry a limited-time item forward once we can no longer see it on a published menu.

5. The photographs

Brand logos are the real marks, reproduced to identify the restaurant, and remain the property of their owners. Where a page quotes a fact or a price from a published source, that source is linked on the page and the credit belongs to its publisher.

Where a restaurant, Uber Eats or DoorDash publishes a clear photograph for an exact menu item, or a freely licensed photograph of the real product exists on Wikimedia Commons with a named photographer, we retain a local display copy and record both the publisher page and original image address. The enlarged image identifies the publisher and links to that source. Exact product-name matching is deliberately strict, so a combo, regional variant or limited-time product does not inherit a picture of something merely similar.

In August 2026 every one of the hundred-odd concept photographs and all thirty-five brand marks were reviewed by eye against what they claim to show. The images that failed - A wrong mark, a mangled composite, a generated picture whose contents did not match its label - Were replaced and re-reviewed, and every logo now carries a recorded source.

Everything else uses a clearly labelled photograph of that kind of dish, not the restaurant’s own product. Items are matched to one of about a hundred food concepts - "bacon cheeseburger", "soft pretzel", "iced coffee" - with one image in a consistent house style per concept. If neither an exact source photo nor a defensible concept exists, the page shows a plain plate mark.

This fallback keeps a large menu readable without pretending that we photographed every product in every country. A concept is only allowed to be as specific as we can defend: "bacon cheeseburger" is a fair description of the food; "the Whopper" would not be. Every menu page states which treatment it uses, and each enlarged image is captioned.

What this means for you

Use a publisher-sourced photo to identify the named product, not to guarantee the portion or presentation at another branch. Treat an illustrative fallback only as a guide to the kind of dish. Brand logos are the real marks, used to identify the restaurant.

6. Menus we researched rather than migrated

Most menus here came from our original data set. A smaller number were researched from published sources, because a market with no priced menus is a market a reader cannot use. Those menus say so at the foot of the page and list the sources they came from.

They are held to a check that does not depend on trusting a citation. Every researched price is converted to US dollars and compared with what the same brand charges for the same product in other markets, or failing that with the dollar band that kind of dish occupies across the menus we already hold. A price that cannot be reconciled with either is dropped rather than published, and what was dropped is recorded alongside what was kept.

What that check does and does not catch

It catches decimal slips, wrong currencies and figures that are simply implausible - the errors that make a price dangerous. It cannot tell you that a plausible price is the current one. Treat a researched menu as a good indication rather than as a till receipt, and check the restaurant’s own app before you spend money on it.

7. Exchange rates

Every dollar figure on this site is converted from a local price using a rate taken once a week and held until the next refresh, so a conversion shown today is the same conversion shown tomorrow. US dollars are the base. The rates are stored with the date they were taken, and the price index says on the page how old they are.

For nineteen of the twenty currencies we convert from, that rate is the ordinary mid-market rate you would get from any currency converter, and you can check our arithmetic against one.

Myanmar is the exception

The Central Bank of Myanmar pegs the kyat at about 2,100 to the dollar, and every mainstream rate feed reports that peg. Almost nobody transacts there. The central bank’s own trade window was selling dollars at 3,658 kyat on 11 August 2026, and the parallel market was nearer 4,350.

Converted at the peg, a Yangon coffee costing 9,500 kyat comes out at $4.52, and Myanmar ranks as one of the most expensive markets on this site, dearer than the United Kingdom. That is not true of anywhere in Myanmar. We therefore convert kyat at the market rate of 4,350 rather than the peg, which puts that same coffee at $2.18.

This means our Myanmar figures will not match a currency converter, and we would rather tell you that than quietly publish a number we know is wrong. The kyat prices themselves are exactly what the menus say. The rate is re-checked with every weekly refresh and the sources behind it are recorded in app/content/fx_overrides.py.

8. Prices readers send us

Some chains publish no prices at all. Costa in Ireland runs about 111 shops, publishes its full menu, and puts not one euro figure anywhere public, because its prices live inside an app. No amount of research fixes that. What does is somebody standing at the counter.

So anyone can send us a price. Nothing sent that way appears on the site automatically. A person reads every submission, and before they see it we convert it to US dollars and compare it with what the same chain charges for the same product in every other market we hold, so the decision is made against evidence rather than instinct.

What a reader price is and is not

It is one person, at one branch, on one day. That is genuinely useful and it is not the same thing as a published price list, so we do not present it as one. A reader price is shown in a different colour, carries a line naming it as reader-reported with the date and branch, and is kept out of the price index, which stays built only from figures a company or a platform published. A published price always wins: a submission fills a gap, it never overwrites.

We never publish the email address of anyone who writes in. It is asked for only so we can come back with a question, and it is used for nothing else.

9. Pages our research pipeline writes

Covering every chain in every market by hand is not achievable, so a scheduled pipeline researches and drafts market profiles - One brand at a time, at most three pages a day. Those pages are clearly labelled automatically researched at the top, carry the date they were produced, and list every source they were drawn from.

The rule that matters is the same one that governs the rest of this site: the pipeline may write prose, but it may not invent a price. A price is only stored when the research returns a working link to a page carrying it, and only after it is checked against what we already know that market charges. Anything that fails either test is discarded and recorded as discarded. Most pages publish with no prices at all, which is the correct outcome.

How to read an automated page

  • Prices on them are individually sourced figures, not a verified menu, and are deliberately excluded from the price index.
  • Nothing on them has been checked by a person yet. Pages written by hand carry no such label.
  • Every claim links to where it came from. If a source looks wrong to you, it probably is - Please tell us.

10. Known limitations

  • National, not local. Franchisees set their own prices. Airport, stadium, motorway and resort outlets are consistently higher.
  • Counter, not delivery. Delivery-app menus are usually marked up 15 - 30% over the in-store board before fees.
  • Published, not audited. We record what a brand publishes. Where a brand publishes nothing for a market, that market is absent rather than estimated.
  • Coverage is uneven by design. Eleven markets is not the world, and every global claim on this site is scoped to the markets we actually hold.
  • Some prices are flagged, not fixed. Our monthly audit compares every price against its own menu and against the same product in other markets. Where something looks wrong but we cannot source a correct figure, we remove the price rather than guess - The item then shows as unpriced.

11. Citing this data

You are welcome to cite figures from FoodMenu.guide with a link to the page the figure came from. Please cite the local-currency price and the date shown on the page rather than a USD conversion, since the conversion moves and the underlying price does not.