Currency converter
Defaults to U.S. dollars → Chinese yuan. Supports shorthand like 29.8k, 1.3m, and 200m.
Grocery price parity lens
Pick two city markets and a supermarket-style product, or let the currency converter choose matching markets automatically. The app normalizes package size, converts currencies, and shows whether the comparison market is cheaper or more expensive after FX.
| Product | Category | Base normalized | Compare normalized | Compare in base currency | Parity ratio | Buying-power multiplier | Notes |
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Ratio guide: 1.00 means roughly equal after exchange conversion. 0.75 means the comparison market is about 25% cheaper. 1.25 means about 25% more expensive. The purchasing-power multiplier is the inverse of the parity ratio, so a ratio of 0.29 corresponds to about 3.45× buying power for that item. The local basket estimate uses the unweighted median of all comparable products currently available for the selected city pair; it is a practical city-level approximation. The World Bank benchmark uses the latest available household-consumption PPP factor for each country and is a national statistic rather than a city-specific price index.
Currency purchasing power and price parity calculator
Price Compass goes beyond a standard currency converter by comparing what money can actually buy in different places.
What does purchasing power mean?
Currency exchange rates tell you how many units of one currency you receive for another. Purchasing power asks a different question: how much can that money buy locally? Price Compass estimates this using comparable city prices and a broader World Bank purchasing power parity benchmark.
Local price parity versus national PPP
The local basket estimate compares normalized consumer-product prices between the selected cities after currency conversion. The World Bank PPP estimate uses national household-consumption price data. Showing both helps separate a specific city’s current cost structure from the countrywide purchasing-power benchmark.
How to use the calculator
Enter an amount, choose two currencies, and select matching city markets. Price Compass shows the live exchange conversion, item-level price parity, a local basket buying-power estimate, and—when available—the latest World Bank household-consumption PPP equivalent.