Are We Londoners Overpaying for Our Pints?

It’s an issue that divides the nation, North and South, East and West, splitting one county from the next. It’s not Brexit but the price of a Great British pint. From London to Scotland or the Midlands, the price of a pint can vary hugely. Drinks like wine, cocktails and even tea and coffee can also differ vastly from place to place but the price gap is most obvious when looking at simple pint of the brown stuff.

In London, you will generally pay between £4.50 and £6 for a pint of craft beer, larger or ale. The average price for the same drink just over 400 miles away in Glasgow is between £2 and £3. Similarly, a cocktail in London will average about £9 while in Glasgow it is more like £5.50. The prices change again when you travel to Manchester, where the average pint ranges between £1.99 and £2.70 and the price of a typical cocktail is £4. The vast disparities between price and location indicates that the more “affluent” an area the more the expensive your drink is likely to be. Of course, the average Londoner doesn’t have the money to spend £3.50 more on a pint than it would cost in Scotland.

Looking further afield, the price of a pint of beer in the Czech capital Prague averages at between 70p and 90p but hop on a plane to New York and the average cost is between £4 and £6. Similarly, the price of 330ml of beer (slightly under a pint) in Norway’s Oslo is just as expensive as London and New York, at around £5 a pint.

Over in Warsaw a pint will set you back 9 złoty, or £1.83 while a cocktail is equally cheap at an average of £4.50, just half of the price in London. Around Europe the price of a pint can change drastically, even from city to city. Looking further abroad, the price of a cocktail in Toronto, Canada is just over £7 and a pint costs just over £4.

It is evident that London, Oslo and New York are some of the most expensive places to drink and cities such as Prague and Warsaw are some of the cheapest. Prices obviously vary around these averages but the general rule is that if you would like to make merry or drown your sorrows on a budget the place to head is Eastern Europe.

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