UK Basket of Goods Over Time
Historical UK prices for 6 everyday items, 1990-2024: bread, milk, eggs, a pint of lager, petrol and a Big Mac, from ONS and The Economist.
Historical UK prices for 6 everyday items from 1990 to 2024. A tangible view of inflation — what the same £1.00 bought you in different decades.
Price history
| Item | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loaf of white sliced bread (800g loaf) | £0.50 | £0.52 | £1.20 | £1.04 | £1.05 | £1.40 |
| Pint of milk (pint, pasteurised) | £0.31 | £0.34 | £0.44 | £0.43 | £0.43 | £0.65 |
| Dozen eggs (12, size 4 (55-60g)) | £1.05 | £1.38 | £2.83 | £2.29 | £1.96 | — |
| Pint of draught lager (pint, in a pub) | £1.22 | £2.00 | £2.94 | £3.45 | — | £4.77 |
| Litre of unleaded petrol (1 litre) | £0.42 | £0.80 | £1.17 | £1.11 | £1.14 | £1.41 |
| Big Mac (1 burger) | — | £1.90 | £2.29 | £2.89 | £3.39 | £4.59 |
Calendar-year averages, rounded to the nearest penny. A dash means no published value for that year; gaps are not filled from other years or other products.
- Dozen eggs: The last value in this series is January 2022; the later series J428 ("Eggs, per dozen", from February 2022) has a different specification, so 2024 is left blank.
- Pint of draught lager: ONS publishes no 2020 annual average for this series.
- Big Mac: The index starts in 2000, so there is no 1990 price.
Sources:
- ONS CZOH - RPI: Ave price - Bread: white loaf, sliced, 800g
- ONS CZNT - RPI: Ave price - Milk: Pasteurised, per pint
- ONS CZNU - RPI: Ave price - Eggs: size 4 (55-60g), per dozen
- ONS CZMS - RPI: Ave price - Draught lager, per pint
- ONS CZMK - RPI: Ave price - Ultra low sulphur/Unleaded petrol, per litre
- The Economist - Big Mac index source data (Britain)
A closer look, year by year
Click any year for a dedicated page showing what £1, £5 and £10 bought you.
Why track a basket of goods?
The monthly Consumer Prices Index (CPI) abstracts price change into a single weighted index number. That is useful for statistics but hides what people actually experience day-to-day: individual items rise at very different rates. On the figures above, a pint of draught lager went from £1.22 in 1990 to £4.77 in 2024, about 3.9 times as much, while the CPI index (ONS D7BT) rose about 2.4 times over the same years.
Our inflation calculator gives the single-number answer. This page gives the tangible one.
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- UK inflation calculator — adjust any amount across years.
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