Real Bulgarian prices, real Bulgarian wages, updated every week. Whether you are a UK pensioner sizing up retirement, a remote worker on UK pay eyeing a move, or simply sceptical of the "cheap Bulgaria" headlines, this page tells you what your money actually buys here, what locals actually earn, and the one number nobody else calculates: how long each of you would have to work to afford the same loaf of bread.
Every figure is sourced from a named retailer or government statistic, date-stamped, and open data under CC-BY-4.0. No "around 100 euros". No Numbeo crowdsourcing.
cost-of-living.json (CC-BY-4.0).
All figures monthly net (after tax, social and NI), May 2026. UK figures shown in £ with € equivalents at £1 = €1.16.
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 Jan 2026; no GBP figures applicable.
National Living Wage £12.71/h gross from 1 April 2026.
Before any price comparison makes sense, you have to know what people actually take home. The Bulgarian minimum wage rose to €620.20 gross per month on 1 January 2026 (the previous BGN 1,213 figure converted at the fixed 1.95583 rate). After 10% flat income tax and 13.78% employee social/health contributions, that becomes about €480 net, or €2.86 per hour. The UK National Living Wage is £12.71 per hour gross from 1 April 2026; at full-time hours that is £1,681 net per month (€1,950), or £11.09 per hour (€12.86) after PAYE and NI. The UK minimum-wage worker earns 4.5 times as much per hour as the Bulgarian one, after tax. That ratio is the lens you need for every price below.
A note on averages: the Bulgarian average net wage is around €1,115/month, with Sofia (€1,770 gross) considerably higher than smaller cities like Shumen (€965 in the broader north-central region). The UK average net is £2,391/month (€2,773). Sources at the foot of the page.
The Bulgarian standard full-time week is 40 hours, giving 168 hours per month. The UK standard full-time week is widely cited as 35 hours, giving 151.67 hours per month. We use those legal-standard hours for both jurisdictions, which is the conservative, like-for-like comparison. If you compare on a 40-hour-week UK basis (what many Brits actually work), the UK net hourly comes out higher and the gap with Bulgaria widens to roughly 5.1× instead of 4.5×. We have stuck with the more cautious 4.5× figure throughout this page.
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 at a fixed rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. The official conversion was clean. The reality on the ground was not. Many vendors used the changeover as cover for a stealth price hike: a public toilet that cost 1 lev now costs 1 euro, a bag of fresh bread that was 1.50 lev is now 1.50 euro, a marshrutka fare that was 2 lev is now 2 euro. Each of those represents a near-doubling, not a conversion. The headline inflation index dilutes this because expensive items (white goods, electronics, contractually-priced services) converted faithfully, but for the small daily transactions that dominate household spending, the rounding-up effect has been brutal.
The result is that Bulgaria currently has the highest inflation rate in the European Union. Wages have not kept pace. The minimum wage rose 12.6% in 2026 to €620.20, but the goods that Bulgarians actually buy day-to-day have, in many cases, risen by 50 to 100% since the changeover. We have written about both sides of this:
The lev (BGN) is no longer legal tender. Every price on this page is in euros, as is every price you will see on a Bulgarian supermarket shelf, restaurant menu, utility bill or rental contract from 2026 onwards.
A single person, all bills paid except rent (pick a rent line below and add it). The percentage badge on each card is what that lifestyle would consume of a Bulgarian net minimum wage. The Frugal tier already exceeds 100%, which is why someone on the legal minimum genuinely cannot afford to live alone here without family support, two incomes, or village rents. The Comfortable tier suits a remote-working Brit on UK pay; the Premium tier is what an expat family in Sofia typically spends.
Heads-up for remote workers: if you spend more than 183 days per year in Bulgaria, you become Bulgarian tax resident and your worldwide income is taxable here at 10 percent flat. UK PAYE figures may not survive the move. See our Taxes guide for the full picture before assuming UK-equivalent take-home.
Cooking from Lidl, walking + buses, no eating out beyond the occasional coffee
| Groceries (cooked at home) | €220 |
| Utilities | €110 |
| Transport (bus pass) | €26 |
| Mobile + internet | €23 |
| Eating out (occasional coffee) | €25 |
| Lifestyle (basic) | €40 |
| Buffer | €76 |
Mid-range groceries, occasional restaurants, gym, mobile data, weekend trips
| Groceries (mid-range) | €320 |
| Utilities | €130 |
| Transport (own car, modest use) | €110 |
| Mobile + internet | €23 |
| Eating out (~6 meals/month) | €120 |
| Lifestyle (gym, cinema, haircut) | €60 |
| Buffer | €117 |
Imported brands, regular eating out, private healthcare top-ups, frequent driving
| Groceries (premium + imported) | €480 |
| Utilities | €160 |
| Transport (car + fuel + service) | €220 |
| Mobile + internet | €35 |
| Eating out (~12 meals/month) | €280 |
| Lifestyle + healthcare top-up | €120 |
| Buffer | €155 |
A typical week's groceries for one or two adults. Prices are taken from the lowest of the three big chains (Lidl, Kaufland, Billa) on each item, except produce where local markets in Shumen often beat the supermarkets in season.
| Item | Size | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| White bread loaf | 700g | €0.69 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Fresh milk 3.6% | 1L | €1.45 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Eggs L size | 10 pack | €2.15 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Chicken breast | 1 kg | €6.49 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Pork mince | 500g | €3.99 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Sirene (white cheese) | 500g | €4.79 | Billa (2026-05-04) |
| Kashkaval (yellow cheese) | 400g | €5.85 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Yoghurt (kiselo mlyako) 3.6% | 400g | €0.85 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Sunflower oil | 1L | €1.79 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Pasta (spaghetti) | 500g | €0.79 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Long-grain rice | 1 kg | €2.05 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Tomatoes (Bulgarian) | 1 kg | €2.45 | Local market, Shumen (2026-05-04) |
| Cucumbers | 1 kg | €1.99 | Local market, Shumen (2026-05-04) |
| Apples | 1 kg | €1.69 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Bananas | 1 kg | €1.79 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Onions | 1 kg | €0.99 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Potatoes | 1 kg | €0.89 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Coffee (ground, mid-range) | 250g | €3.49 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Sugar | 1 kg | €1.15 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Mineral water (still) | 1.5L | €0.55 | Lidl Bulgaria (2026-05-04) |
| Beer (Zagorka, can) | 500ml | €0.95 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
| Table wine (mid-range red) | 750ml | €4.50 | Kaufland (2026-05-04) |
Monthly bills for a typical 80m² apartment with two occupants. Electricity is averaged across day and night tariffs (Energo-Pro NE in Shumen and the wider north-east; EVN serves the south-east; ChEZ-elektro serves the west). Gas is amortised: in winter you pay much more, in summer almost nothing. Together they reflect a realistic full-year monthly average.
| Item | Size | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 300 kWh/month | €39.30 | Energo-Pro NE Bulgaria tariff (Shumen region) day+night blend, KEVR-approved (2026-05-05) |
| Water + sewage | 10 m³/month | €18 | ViK Shumen, household tariff (2026-05-04) |
| Heating gas (winter avg) | monthly amortised | €38 | Bulgargaz tariffs (2026-05-04) |
| Internet (fibre 300 Mbps) | monthly | €19 | Vivacom fibre 300 Mbps tariff plan (standalone, mid-range) (2026-05-05) |
| Mobile (10 GB data + unlimited calls) | monthly | €9 | Yettel mid-range plan (2026-05-04) |
| Council rubbish fee | monthly amortised | €6 | Shumen Municipality (2026-05-04) |
Fuel prices update daily from Fuelo.net (which aggregates every petrol station in Bulgaria). Public transport tariffs were re-priced for the euro changeover; check the date stamp on each line.
| Item | Size | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Petrol A95 | 1L | €1.50 | Fuelo.net (2026-05-04) |
| Diesel | 1L | €1.79 | Fuelo.net (2026-05-04) |
| LPG | 1L | €0.82 | Fuelo.net (2026-05-04) |
| Bus ticket (city, single) | 1 ride | €1 | Sofia public transport (2026-05-04) |
| Monthly bus pass (Sofia) | 1 month, all lines | €25.50 | Sofia public transport (sofiatraffic.bg, January 2026 conversion) (2026-05-05) |
| Taxi (5 km, day rate) | 5 km | €4.50 | Yellow Taxi/OK Supertrans (2026-05-04) |
| Train Sofia, Varna (2nd class) | one way | €12 | BDZ Passengers (razpisanie.bdz.bg, 2nd class base fare) (2026-05-05) |
Prices from Glovo Sofia menu samples (the platform that absorbed Foodpanda in 2024) plus a fixed panel of six Shumen restaurants we re-check monthly. Eating out in Bulgaria is genuinely cheap by UK standards, but in Sofia centre and along the Black Sea coast the gap narrows.
| Item | Size | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Espresso (cafe) | single | €1.20 | Glovo Sofia sample (2026-05-04) |
| Cappuccino | regular | €2.30 | Glovo Sofia sample (2026-05-04) |
| Banitsa from bakery | 1 portion | €1.15 | Local bakeries (2026-05-04) |
| Beer in bar (draught) | 500ml | €2.50 | Glovo Sofia sample (2026-05-04) |
| Soft drink in restaurant | 330ml | €1.80 | Glovo Sofia sample (2026-05-04) |
| Daily menu (dnevno menu) | soup + main | €8.50 | Shumen restaurants survey (2026-05-04) |
| Pizza margherita (mid-range) | 30cm | €9.50 | Glovo Sofia sample (2026-05-04) |
| Three-course meal for two | mid-range restaurant | €45 | Numbeo cross-check (2026-05-04) |
| McDonald's Big Mac meal | 1 meal | €7.20 | McDonald's BG (2026-05-04) |
Median asking rent from Imot.bg listings (the dominant Bulgarian property portal). Asking rents are typically 5 to 10 percent above what tenants actually pay after negotiation, especially in Shumen and other smaller cities. Sofia rents firm up faster.
| Item | Size | Asking median | Agreed (est.) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-bedroom flat, Sofia centre | ~50m² | €600 | €558 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 1-bedroom flat, Sofia outer | ~50m² | €425 | €395 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 3-bedroom flat, Sofia centre | ~90m² | €1,100 | €1,023 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 1-bedroom flat, Plovdiv centre | ~50m² | €380 | €353 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 1-bedroom flat, Varna centre | ~50m² | €425 | €395 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 1-bedroom flat, Shumen centre | ~50m² | €240 | €223 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| 3-bedroom flat, Shumen centre | ~90m² | €420 | €391 | Imot.bg median (2026-05-04) |
| Village house (rural) | varies | €150 | €140 | Imot.bg median rural (2026-05-04) |
The bits beyond food and shelter. Gym, cinema, haircuts, streaming.
| Item | Size | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gym membership (mid-range) | monthly | €32 | Pulse, Pulsis chains (2026-05-04) |
| Cinema ticket | single, 2D | €7.50 | Arena Cinemas (2026-05-04) |
| Haircut, men's | standard | €8 | Shumen barbers survey (2026-05-04) |
| Haircut + style, women's | standard | €22 | Shumen salons survey (2026-05-04) |
| Netflix (standard) | monthly | €8.99 | Netflix Bulgaria (April 2026 published rate) (2026-05-05) |
Same items at Tesco own-brand standard, converted at £1 = €1.16. Two columns matter: "Bulgaria saves" (nominal price gap) and "Real cost" (how many minutes of net minimum-wage work the item costs in each country). The first column makes Bulgaria look cheap; the second tells the truth. A loaf of bread is 21% cheaper in Bulgaria, but it takes a Bulgarian on minimum wage three times longer to earn it. Petrol is 12% cheaper in Bulgaria, but 3.5× harder to afford. Rent is the only line where Sofia is genuinely easier than London at the local minimum wage, and even there only barely. This is why "Bulgaria is cheap" is true for Brits arriving with UK income and largely false for Bulgarians on Bulgarian wages.
| Item | BG € | UK € | Bulgaria saves | BG time | UK time | Real cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White bread loaf 700g | €0.69 | €0.87 | +20.6% | 14 min | 4 min | 3.5× harder |
| Milk 1L | €1.45 | €1.23 | -17.8% | 30 min | 6 min | 5.3× harder |
| Eggs (10) | €2.15 | €2.75 | +21.8% | 45 min | 13 min | 3.5× harder |
| Chicken breast 1kg | €6.49 | €8.12 | +20.0% | 2.3 h | 38 min | 3.6× harder |
| Sunflower oil 1L | €1.79 | €1.91 | +6.2% | 38 min | 9 min | 4.2× harder |
| Petrol A95 1L | €1.48 | €1.69 | +12.4% | 31 min | 8 min | 3.9× harder |
| Cinema ticket | €7.50 | €12.50 | +40.0% | 2.6 h | 58 min | 2.7× harder |
| Mid-range meal for two | €45 | €68 | +33.8% | 16 h | 5.3 h | 3.0× harder |
| Gym membership/month | €32 | €42 | +23.8% | 11 h | 3.3 h | 3.4× harder |
| 1-bed flat, capital city centre | €600 | €2,100 | +71.4% | 210 h | 163 h | 1.3× harder |
It depends, and the dependency runs almost entirely on which currency your income arrives in. The same supermarket trolley, the same fuel pump, the same rented flat will feel like a steal to one person and a stretch to another, because the prices on the shelf have not adjusted for the wages in the wallet. Three honest answers:
The simple maths: the 2026 UK new State Pension is roughly £230.25 per week, around €1,170 per month. Add a modest workplace pension of, say, £400 a month and you are looking at around €1,635 monthly arriving in a country where the Frugal tier costs €520 and a 1-bed flat in Shumen rents for €240. That is more than €800 of headroom even before you have used the eating-out or travel budget. The same pensioner trying to rent in any English town with the same income is, frankly, in trouble.
Three things make this group's "yes" the cleanest answer on the page. First, your income does not depend on the local labour market, so the 4.5× wage gap that hurts everyone else does not apply. Second, the Bulgarian flat 10 percent income tax is gentler than UK marginal rates once you cross the Personal Allowance, and the UK State Pension is exempt from Bulgarian tax under Article 24 of the Personal Income Tax Act (statutory social-security pensions are non-taxable here). Third, healthcare. As a Bulgarian resident pensioner you are entitled to register with NHIF using the UK S1 form if your pension qualifies, which means UK-funded healthcare access without paying Bulgarian self-insurance contributions.
Honest caveats. Winter heating in an older flat can double the gas bill for three months. The euro changeover has eaten 10 to 20 percent off the headline grocery savings since this time last year, and Bulgaria currently has the highest inflation rate in the EU, so plan a small annual buffer rather than freezing your budget. Property purchase is also worth considering: a habitable village house starts at €25,000 to €40,000, removing rent from the equation entirely. The Health guide, Taxes guide and Property guide have the full mechanics.
If your income lands at UK average levels (£2,391 net per month, around €2,773), the Comfortable tier here costs you a third of it. The Premium tier, the same. You bank the rest. A worker on £40,000 gross who relocates to Shumen, Plovdiv or Veliko Tarnovo can plausibly save €1,500 to €2,000 a month after all bills, in a setting with proper food, real seasons, mountains an hour away, the Black Sea three hours away, and Sofia airport an hour from most of the country.
The catch is structural, not financial: 183 days a year in Bulgaria makes you Bulgarian tax resident, and your worldwide income becomes taxable here at 10 percent flat. That is a tax cut for most British incomes, but it is not automatic, and your UK employer cannot keep paying you on PAYE indefinitely without creating a permanent-establishment problem in Bulgaria. The standard workarounds are well-trodden: invoice your UK employer through a Bulgarian EOOD (single-member limited company, 10 percent corporation tax + 5 percent dividend), register as a self-employed freelancer on the 7.5 percent effective regime if you are solo, or have your UK employer engage an Employer of Record. None are exotic. All require setup. The Taxes guide walks through the choice; the Residency guide covers the visa and registration paperwork that comes first.
The non-financial dividend is harder to quantify but it is real. Hours saved on commuting and traffic. Restaurant meals that cost half what they did at home, in places you will recommend to friends. A growing remote-worker community in Sofia, Plovdiv, Bansko and along the Black Sea. School fees for international or private schools that are a fraction of UK private fees. The "Comfortable" tier in this guide is sized for a single person; a remote-working couple typically lands solidly in Premium without trying.
This is what the time-cost columns earlier on the page are really about. The Frugal tier (€520 per month) already exceeds the €480 net minimum wage before rent is added. A loaf of bread costs three times more in working hours than it does for a Brit on the National Living Wage. A litre of milk costs five times more in working time. A tank of petrol nearly four times. The numbers are not subtle.
The household maths only closes when you stop counting per individual. Most Bulgarians on minimum wage do not live alone: they live with parents into their thirties, share flats well past student age, or live in villages where a habitable house rents for €100 to €200 and groceries are partly home-grown. Two minimum-wage earners pooling income against a single rent makes a Frugal lifestyle workable. One does not. That is why the average household here functions but the average individual on minimum wage cannot afford the basics on the shelf without it.
The bigger picture is the diaspora. Around 1.1 million Bulgarians live and work abroad, the highest per-capita brain-drain figure in the EU. The trade routes are well-established: care work in Italy and Germany, hospitality in Greece and Spain, construction in the UK and Netherlands, agriculture in Spain and France. Remittances back to Bulgaria run at roughly 3 to 4 percent of GDP annually, propping up family budgets that the local economy cannot. The pattern is rarely permanent. Most Bulgarians who leave plan to return, and many do, after five to ten years of saving abroad, often to start a small business or buy a house outright. The diaspora is not a vote against Bulgaria; it is the practical workaround for the exact gap this page measures.
Whether that gap closes depends on Bulgarian productivity catching up with European wage levels. Eurozone membership from January 2026 removes one safety valve (no more lev devaluations to ease the pressure), which means wage convergence has to come from real productivity gains, real foreign direct investment and real public-sector reform. None of those happen quickly. So while we wait, anyone in Bulgaria earning at the bottom of the labour market is paying European prices on Eastern European pay, and the maths does not close.
So, is Bulgaria cheap? For the right wallet, yes, generously so. A British pensioner with a private pot on top can live materially better here than they could at home. A remote worker on UK pay can save half their income while getting access to a country with genuine quality of life. For everyone else, less than the headlines suggest. A Bulgarian on minimum wage is paying European prices on a fraction of European pay, and the only honest answer is that the system, for them, is not working as the supermarket flyers might suggest.
That is the picture this page exists to give you, and the reason every figure here is sourced and date-stamped: so you can answer the question for your own situation, with your own numbers, and know we have not flattered the data to make a tidier story.
A single person, all bills paid except rent, falls into one of three tiers:
Rent is on top. Typical 1-bed rents: €240 in Shumen, €425 in Plovdiv or Varna, €600 in Sofia centre.
Yes in euros, no in working time.
So a 20 percent grocery saving still leaves a Bulgarian working three times longer than a Brit to put the same food on the table. Bulgaria is genuinely cheap for Brits arriving with UK income; it is not cheap for Bulgarians.
Yes, comfortably in the right city. The 2026 UK State Pension is roughly £230 per week, about €1,150 per month. That puts you well into the Comfortable tier in Shumen or Plovdiv with rent included, and well above the Frugal tier in Sofia. Add a workplace pension on top and Premium is reachable.
Most British retirees in Bulgaria stay under €1,000 per month total spending. See our Taxes guide for how the UK State Pension is treated under the UK-Bulgaria double tax treaty.
Because for many small purchases they have. The euro adoption on 1 January 2026 used a fixed conversion rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN, so 1 lev should have become €0.51. In practice many vendors rounded up:
Each of those is a near-doubling, not a conversion. Big-ticket items converted faithfully; small daily purchases got hit hard. Bulgaria currently has the highest inflation rate in the EU as a consequence.
Sofia is about 70 percent cheaper in absolute euro terms. But measured in working hours at the local minimum wage, Sofia rent costs roughly 210 hours per month while London costs 183 hours, so for someone earning the local minimum, Sofia rent is actually slightly less affordable than London rent.
About €45 to €55 for a basket of 22 staples covering bread, milk, eggs, chicken, mince, dairy, oil, pasta, rice, fresh produce, coffee, sugar, water and a couple of treats.
For a typical 80m² flat with two occupants, expect roughly:
Total around €130 per month for a typical household.
Around €1.50 per litre for A95 unleaded and €1.79 for diesel as of May 2026 (live data from Fuelo.net). About 12 percent cheaper than UK pump prices in absolute euro terms, but in working-hour terms 3.5 times harder for a Bulgarian on minimum wage to afford.
Yes, significantly:
Coffee culture is strong and cheap; full restaurant meals are where the savings versus the UK become obvious.
From 1 January 2026 the Bulgarian minimum wage is €620.20 gross per month, or about €480 net after 10 percent flat income tax and 13.78 percent employee social and health contributions. That works out to around €2.86 net per hour at the standard 40-hour Bulgarian working week (168 hours per month).
The minimum wage rose 12.6 percent in 2026, but most consumer prices have risen faster since the euro changeover.
Median asking rents (Imot.bg, May 2026):
Asking rents are typically 5 to 10 percent above what tenants actually pay after negotiation, especially in Shumen and other smaller cities. Sofia rents firm up faster.
If you contribute to the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) through employment or self-insurance, GP visits, hospital treatment and most prescriptions are covered.
Full details in our Health guide.
Not really, no. A Frugal lifestyle (€520 per month) already exceeds the €480 net minimum wage before rent is added. That is why most Bulgarians on minimum wage live:
The minimum wage is sized for a household, not a single tenant.
Yes, if you spend more than 183 days a year in Bulgaria you become Bulgarian tax resident and your worldwide income is taxable here at 10 percent flat. The UK still keeps its taxing rights on certain UK-source income (rental, government service pensions) but employment income is taxed where the work is physically performed.
Most remote-working Brits in Bulgaria either:
The Comfortable tier figures in this guide assume you are taking home roughly UK-equivalent net pay. If you are paid through the Bulgarian system instead, your take-home may be different. See our Taxes guide for the full picture.
Every price on this page is published in JSON at cost-of-living.json under CC-BY-4.0. Each item has a named source and a date stamp.
Groceries: Lidl Bulgaria and Kaufland Bulgaria weekly flyers (refreshed Mon and Thu), Billa online shop product API. We take the lowest currently advertised price across the three for each item. Fresh produce where supermarket pricing is weak is taken from a fixed panel of Shumen markets re-checked weekly.
Fuel: Fuelo.net national averages, refreshed every six hours. Their dataset covers ~80,000 petrol stations across Europe.
Utilities: Published tariffs from Energo-Pro NE (electricity, Shumen region), EVN, ChEZ-elektro, ViK Shumen (water and sewage), Bulgargaz (gas), Vivacom and Yettel (telecoms), all KEVR/CRC-approved. Bills are calculated from typical household consumption (300 kWh, 10 m³ water) so the figure is a real bill, not an artificial average.
Eating out: Sampled from Glovo Sofia restaurant menus (the platform that absorbed Foodpanda in 2024), plus a fixed Shumen panel of six restaurants re-checked monthly.
Rent: Imot.bg median asking rent across all current listings, recalculated weekly per city and per bedroom count.
Wages: Bulgarian minimum wage from the Council of Tripartite Cooperation (BGN 1,213 → €620.20 gross from 1 Jan 2026). UK National Living Wage from gov.uk (£12.71/h gross from 1 April 2026, against frozen Personal Allowance £12,570 and 8% employee NI). UK average from ONS ASHE 2025. Bulgarian average from NSI Q3 2025.
Cross-check: Every month we compare our basket against the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute (NSI) published average retail prices. If we drift more than 5% from the NSI average for any category, we investigate the difference and flag the line.
It is not Numbeo. It is not a self-reported user-survey aggregate. Every figure on this page traces to a specific named source with a date stamp, and you can verify any number by clicking through to the source URL we cite.
The dataset is published as JSON at cost-of-living.json under Creative Commons BY-4.0. You may quote, embed and remix the data with attribution to Shumen.UK.
Open data, CC-BY-4.0. The underlying dataset is published as a versioned JSON API at cost-of-living.json.
Dane, A. (2026). Cost of Living in Bulgaria 2026: real, sourced, updated weekly. Shumen.UK. https://shumen.uk/cost-of-living.html (Retrieved 2026-05-04)
Dane, Adrian. "Cost of Living in Bulgaria 2026." Shumen.UK, 2026-05-04, https://shumen.uk/cost-of-living.html.
@misc{shumen_cotl_2026,
author = {Adrian Dane},
title = {Cost of Living in Bulgaria 2026: real, sourced, updated weekly},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Shumen.UK},
url = {https://shumen.uk/cost-of-living.html},
note = {Accessed 2026-05-04}
}
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