Baltic Basket — what everyday life costs

Lithuania

Baltic Basket gathers the official figures behind everyday costs in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia: heating, food, electricity, motor fuel, gas, firewood, rent.

National averages, not the price on your bill. Where two countries cannot honestly be compared, we say so.

Early version. Numbers are official statistics, not shop-shelf prices.

The whole picture

Where this sits in its own history

11-item basket in Lithuania: 61.6 % of earlier readings were lower.

Figures for 2026-09-30

What this number measures
  • A percentage change against the same period a year earlier — a rate of change, not a price level.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every day.
Things to know
  • This describes what has already happened. It is not a view of what comes next.
  • Computed from the other modules' published figures; nothing new was collected.
  • A position in history needs at least 24 readings spanning at least 730 days. Where there are fewer, we say so instead of showing a number.
  • Seasonal comparisons use the same month, week or half-year, never a different one.
  • Missing periods stay missing. Nothing here is filled in.
  • This compares how much each cost has changed, not how much each cost is.
  • No single combined index: that would need published household consumption weights.
  • These two moved together. That is all it says — neither one explains the other.
  • 80 signals across all figures were not computed. Each one says why.
  • Each of the 13 signals either carries its window and its count, or names why it was refused. A step statistic needs 24 steps over 730 days; a seasonal profile needs 5 full years.
Where it comes from

Heating and power at home

Home heating

Nothing is published for Lithuania.

No data — this is not zero.

Things to know
  • Heat is priced by each provider separately, and the approved tariffs differ several times over. A national average is not the price on your bill.
  • The countries measure different things, so they are not compared here.
Where it comes from

Electricity

Electricity in Lithuania — Exchange price now: €31.68 per megawatt-hour.

Figures for 2026-10-18

That is about 1.0% cheaper than a year ago.

That is about 3.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, with VAT.

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, per megawatt-hour.
  • It is a figure for one electricity price area, not for a whole country.
  • The source publishes this every hour.
Things to know
  • This is the exchange price, not your bill.
  • Nothing here is estimated: every rate comes from a published price list, and the all-in figures come from a price survey. What is worked out is the bill itself — the rates and the monthly fees added up at a chosen monthly consumption. That total is arithmetic, not a bill anyone received.
  • Fixed monthly fees make the effective price per kilowatt-hour fall as consumption rises, so one number cannot answer the question. The bill is worked out at each step from 50 to 1000 kilowatt-hours a month.
  • Eurostat's taxes, fees, levies and charges figure already contains VAT. It is published as it arrives, with the same figure without VAT derived beside it, and this layer never adds a VAT rate on top of it.
  • The Estonian regulator's own headline price is not published here. It spreads a monthly fee across a per-kilowatt-hour sum, on the dearest household network package and an implied consumption of a very small household, and it reconciles with the survey figure only if that fee is treated as a per-kilowatt-hour charge. The consumption-weighted survey figure is published instead.
  • Each point is one calendar month's average of the hourly exchange prices, with that month's cheapest and dearest hour kept alongside it — 173 months, June 2012 to October 2026.
  • Today here means 2026-10-18: midnight to midnight in Latvian time (EET/EEST), not a UTC day. Times are still shown in UTC, marked with a Z.
  • Compared as calendar-month averages for Latvia: the current month so far, through 2026-10-18, against the whole of September 2026 and the whole of October 2025.
  • Three levels of detail: month by month back to June 2012, day by day for the last 180 days, and 15-minute steps for today and tomorrow. Nothing between two points is filled in.
  • Today's high and low are 15-minute market prices; the daily chart's high and low are averages of whole hours, so the two are not the same number.
  • The EE price zone joined the day-ahead market on 2010-04-01, but this source's own history begins 2013-06-03. The line starts where the source starts, not where the market did.
  • Today (2026-10-18) the exchange price in Latvia averages 11.98 cents/kWh including VAT: the cheapest 15-minute block of the day is 2.85 cents at 03:00 UTC, the dearest 27.43 cents at 17:00 UTC.
  • The cheapest 2-hour stretch still ahead today starts at 00:15 UTC, averaging 3.31 cents/kWh including VAT. Days here are Latvian days (EET/EEST); the clock is UTC.
Where it comes from

Gas

Gas in Lithuania — Piped natural gas, all taxes included: 6.29 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Figures for 2026-S1

That is about 5.7% cheaper than a year ago.

Before taxes: 5.16 cents per kilowatt-hour.

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, per kilowatt-hour.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this twice a year.
Things to know
  • Official half-year average for a typical household connection (Eurostat band D2), all taxes included. Not today's price and not your own tariff.
  • Piped natural gas, Eurostat consumption band D2 (20 to 199 GJ a year, about 5,600–55,000 kWh) — a typical household connection. The smallest band costs far more per kWh, because the fixed connection charge is spread over very little gas.
  • Headline prices include all taxes and levies; the figure without taxes is on the same card.
  • A half-year source: the 2026-S1 figure is published about four months after the half-year ends, and then stays the newest figure for six months.
  • Gas use is seasonal, so the headline change compares 2026-S1 with 2025-S1 — the same half-year one year earlier — and not with the previous half-year.
  • Bottled LPG has no official euro price in the Baltic statistics, so the national series here is the HICP index CP04522 — a rate of change, not what a cylinder costs. What a cylinder costs is published by the sellers themselves, and those prices are listed separately, seller by seller.
  • Cylinder prices come from 4 named sellers' own published pricelists. This is what those sellers charge, listed one by one — it is not a national average, and no average of them is computed.
  • A first purchase costs the cylinder plus the gas; a refill costs the gas only. Both are shown separately wherever the seller publishes both, because one number alone would be wrong for half of all buyers.
  • Cylinder sizes are quoted as each seller quotes them, in litres or in kilograms, and the seller's own size-to-weight mapping is carried with the offer. Litres are never converted to kilograms here.
  • Lithuania has no cylinder price here. Every Lithuanian seller found was checked and none can be read: some robots.txt files exclude this agent, one site is behind a bot check, and the rest publish no household cylinder pricelist at all. That is an absence with reasons, not a gap.
  • These sellers publish only the refill price, so what the cylinder itself costs is not shown for them: Intergaz SIA, LPG (SIA Latvijas propāna gāze), Olerex (AS Propaan).
  • New empty 50 litre cylinders are no longer sold in Latvia — that size is supplied only in exchange for an empty one you already own. It is also the size the Latvian statistical series tracks.
  • Where one seller's price differs between cities (Daugavpils, Jūrmala, Rīga), the seller states the reason itself: the difference is the cost of delivery.
  • Could not be read on this run, so the last stored prices are shown with their own older date: Intergaz SIA.
  • Piped gas and bottled LPG are different products in different units (metered kWh against a fixed-mass cylinder) and are never added together.
  • Wholesale exchange prices are not included: getbaltic.com now resolves to the EEX site, where market data sits behind a commercial licence — and an exchange price is not a household bill in any case.
  • Half-year series: 38 points per country, 2007-12-31 to 2026-06-30. Each point sits on the LAST day of the half-year it describes, because that is the period the number covers.
  • The consumption band is part of the number, so every band is published per country: a band is never shown with another country's price.
  • Second source for EE: Statistics Estonia KE32 publishes the same band D2 figure. 38 half-years line up, 37 of them to the last published digit, 1 differ. It is not an independent measurement — the same office compiles this number and reports it to Eurostat — so agreement shows the figure was copied across correctly, not that it is right.
  • Where the two publications differ for EE (2016-S2), both numbers are shown as published and never averaged.
  • The headline source has no gaps for EE, so the second source stays a check rather than a second line.
  • For EE the VAT rate implied by the source's own figures differs from the statutory rate on file in: 2016-S1, 2016-S2. The statutory rate is used and the gap is published, not smoothed.
  • This second source starts at 2015-06-30, while the headline series starts at 2007-12-31. It is a check on the recent half-years, not extra history.
Where it comes from

Firewood and pellets

Firewood and pellets in Lithuania — Wood chips, exchange price: €32.35 per megawatt-hour.

Figures for 2026-10-13

That is about 62% dearer than a year ago.

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, per megawatt-hour.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every week.
Things to know
  • This is the wholesale exchange price between traders, not a shop price. A household pays considerably more for firewood or pellets brought to the door.
  • The change against a year ago is unusually large. Wood fuel prices really do swing this far — check the year-ago date shown beside it.
  • The exchange price is what traders pay for wood fuel in bulk. It is not the price of a delivered load of firewood or a bag of pellets, and no Baltic country publishes that retail price.
  • We never convert cubic metres into MWh. That would need moisture and density assumptions that none of the sources give, so every figure keeps its own unit.
  • The exchange keeps only a rolling 18-month window; older weeks are gone from the source. We archive every week we fetch — 1380 rows so far — so this history outlives the source's own.
  • The index is weekly, and every figure carries the week it belongs to.
  • Lithuania ended the reduced 9% VAT rate on 1 January 2026, and it applied to firewood and wood fuel as well as district heating. Lithuanian wood fuel is now taxed at 21%.
  • Latvian households pay 12% VAT on wood fuel, not 21%. This page said otherwise until September 2026.
  • Listing portals and traders' own price lists are deliberately left out: they are asking prices from a self-selected sample, with no weight for volume, and they would look like retail prices without being representative.
  • 4 sellers, 13 prices. This is what they charge, not what the Baltics charge.
  • Cubic metres come solid, stacked and loose, and a loose one holds about 40% less wood. Every unit here is the seller's own, never converted.
  • Some sellers publish no date, so their price is dated the day we read it.
  • 1 seller(s) could not be read today.
  • 12 sites tell our crawler not to read them. We do not read them.
  • The solid-fuels index also covers coal, peat and briquettes, not only wood.
  • The Latvian firewood figure is one seller's contract price — the state forest company LVM — per solid cubic metre of roundwood. It is not a shop price and not a stacked cubic metre.
  • The Latvian state forest company's site now tells our crawler not to read it, so its firewood series stops at the second quarter of 2026. What we already collected stays.
  • Lithuania's state forest company does publish a household firewood price list for each of its 24 regions, but only as PDFs its own site closes to crawlers. The numbers exist; we may not take them.
  • In 2025 buyers in Latvia paid 15 euro per loose cubic metre of wood chips on average — 20 yearly figures back to 2006.
  • This table is published in whole euros, so each figure stands for a band of about one euro.
  • The households column of this table is empty in every year; the figure covers all final consumers.
  • The exchange price is per megawatt-hour and the paid price is per loose cubic metre. They are not the same measure and no conversion is offered.
  • These 2 Estonian figures are what enterprises paid, not what households paid.
  • For wood chips the source does not say which cubic metre it means, although it does for firewood. The unit is left unnamed rather than guessed.
Where it comes from

Food

Food shopping

Food shopping in Lithuania — 11-item basket: €25.04 for the whole basket.

Figures for 2026-09

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, for the whole basket.
  • A national average across all retailers, including discounters.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every month.
Things to know
  • Monthly national average across all retailers — not one shop's shelf.
Where it comes from

Housing

Rent

Rents vs a year ago in Lithuania: +10.0% compared with a year ago.

Figures for 2026-09

What this number measures
  • A percentage change against the same period a year earlier — a rate of change, not a price level.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every month.
Things to know
  • This is an index of change, not a price. There is no official euro-per-square-metre rent figure for Latvia or Estonia.
  • CP041 is actual rentals for housing. It measures how fast rents change, not what they are. No free official rent levels exist for Latvia or Estonia.
  • The old Eurostat tables (prc_hicp_manr, prc_hicp_midx) were frozen in December 2025. This uses the live prc_hicp_minr series instead.
  • The house price index shown for 2026-Q2 measures the cost of BUYING a home. It is a separate quarterly series — it is not rent.
  • Lithuanian rent levels: Lithuania only, euros per square metre a YEAR, city level only, annual data for 2025 — already 10 months old. No national figure is published.
  • Full monthly history from 1997-01-31 to 2026-09-30 (346 points). The rent index itself (2015 = 100) goes back to 1996.
  • The August 1997–June 1998 annual rates describe the end of administered Soviet-era rents rather than a market, so they are left out of this line; the index for those months is published in full.
  • For September 2026 the national index reads 1.1% and the harmonised one 1.1%, 0 percentage points apart. Both are compiled by the same office, so this is a second index, not a second source.
  • A national CPI and the EU-harmonised HICP cover different households and different spending by design, so a gap between them is expected, not a mistake.
  • Across 309 months the two lines give the same published figure 296 times (95.8%), and every month that differs differs by exactly 0.1 percentage points — the rounding step. This shows the figure reaches Eurostat unchanged; it does not show the figure is right.
  • The national index (309 monthly readings) is published beside the harmonised one, never merged into it.
  • The office's own terms page could not be retrieved. The open data record 'osp' for the same publisher states CC0-1.0, and that is all this page claims.
  • Listing portals (SS.lv, City24, Aruodas, KV.ee) are deliberately left out: asking prices from a self-selected sample are not signed rents.
  • 26 source value(s) fell outside the plausible range and were left out rather than shown.
Where it comes from

Water, refuse and building fees

Water, refuse and building fees in Lithuania — Water and sewerage, per cubic metre: €3.67 per cubic metre.

Figures for 2026-09

That is about 1.0% dearer than a year ago.

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, per cubic metre.
  • The base price the regulator approves for this undertaking. The invoice adds the adjustment components set each year and any separate fixed monthly charge, so the base price is a floor, not the bill.
  • The source publishes this price without VAT. VAT has been added here at the statutory rate for this country, and both figures are shown.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every month.
Things to know
  • Four household services in one card, and they are not measured the same way. Water and sewerage are per cubic metre in all three countries, so the unit is shared — but the basis is not: Latvia publishes a surveyed national average, Estonia the median of approved tariffs, Lithuania a regulated base price that is a floor rather than a bill. Refuse collection is not even shared in unit: Latvia bills per cubic metre of refuse, Estonia per container emptying, Lithuania per square metre of dwelling per month. No country publishes a price for the building management fee; Lithuania publishes a council-set ceiling, which is not a price either, and the only cross-country measure is an index.
  • Each country bills refuse collection for a different physical thing, so the three numbers are not versions of one number and are never combined.
  • Latvian average prices are collected in Riga and nine other towns and weighted to a national figure. They are an average, not a count of all 42 municipalities.
  • The Latvian series runs from January 2005 and crosses the 2014 currency change. The statistical office republished the earlier years in euro at the fixed rate; the series is theirs, not a conversion done here.
  • Estonian approved prices run from 2.09 to 10.70 euro per cubic metre without VAT across 61 undertakings. A national average would be no household's bill.
  • Estonian sewerage prices are often split into pollution groups I to V. A household is group I, and that is the group shown.
  • The association's 42 members reported a median of 3.805 EUR/m³ on 2025-12-31; the register's 61 regulated undertakings had a median of 4.050 on 2026-09-21, a difference of -6.05%. Two lists, two dates — not one price measured twice.
  • Each row's price including VAT was checked against its price excluding VAT at 24%; 0 rows failed and were left out.
  • 30 earlier editions back to 2007-07-01 are listed but not yet read into the series.
  • The Estonian register is a snapshot with an as-of date and carries no history of its own. The earlier Estonian points are read from 15 earlier editions of the same register kept by the Internet Archive, the first dated 2019-12-20, each for the date it states; where no copy was kept there is no point, and none is filled in.
  • Estonian figures carry VAT at the rate in force on each date: 20% to the end of 2023, 22% from January 2024 and 24% from July 2025. Part of the rise across those dates is tax, not tariff; the figure without VAT is published beside it.
  • Lithuanian figures are regulated base prices for the apartment-customer category. The invoice adds annually set adjustment components and a separate fixed monthly charge.
  • Lithuanian base prices for an apartment customer run from 1.05 to 5.25 euro per cubic metre without VAT across 51 undertakings.
  • Lithuanian price decisions from 2007-12-30 to 2014-12-04 also exist in the register, 142 of them, and are not joined to this line. They come from before the 2015 rules: at least 129 of them are denominated in litas, at least 88 are not written as base prices at all, and 130 carry no end date. Joining them would be a different measurement under the same name.
  • The utility's own page also carries a tariff that only takes effect in 2027. The figure shown is the one in force today.
  • Neither Estonia nor Lithuania publishes a national refuse price level, so those two countries carry no refuse price here — only the index.
  • The statistical office collects this fee to build an index. It publishes the index and no average price level, and neither do we — there is none to publish.
  • Two limits travel with this ceiling: it is set without VAT while administrators charge with VAT, and it binds only buildings that have a municipality-appointed administrator. Buildings run by an owners' association are outside it.
  • A charge per cubic metre and a charge per month cannot be added into one number without saying how much water the household uses, and no such assumption is made here. The two are shown side by side instead.
  • History by country: EE 17, 2019-12-20 – 2026-09-21 · LT 118, 2016-12-31 – 2026-09-30 · LV 260, 2005-01-31 – 2026-08-31.
  • Points for LT, LV sit on the last day of the month they describe.
  • Points for EE carry the date the source itself states, which need not be a month end.
  • The countries measure different things, so they are not compared here.
Where it comes from

Getting around

Filling the car

Filling the car in Lithuania — Diesel: €2.21 per litre.

Figures for 2026-10-12

Before taxes: €1.27 per litre.

What this number measures
  • A price in euro, per litre.
  • It is a national figure.
  • The source publishes this every week.
Things to know
  • Weekly national average — not the price at your station today.
  • For September 2026 the statistical office measured 2.08 EUR/l and the EU bulletin averaged 2.11 EUR/l — a difference of -1.62%. Both include VAT.
  • Across 260 months the two typically sit -0.31% apart. That is a timing difference, not an error in either.
  • The office's own series (261 monthly readings) is published beside the weekly one, never merged into it.
  • The office's own terms page could not be retrieved. The open data record 'osp' for the same publisher states CC0-1.0, and that is all this page claims.
  • Estonia has no second source for this figure. All 30 tables in the statistical office’s price folder are indices or changes; none is an average price in euro. That is what is published, not a gap in this page.
  • The word “fuel” does appear in 2 Estonian category name(s), but inside the farm input price index. That measures what a farm pays for energy, not what a driver pays at the pump, and it is never set against the bulletin.
  • Statistics Estonia states in the footer of every database page: “Statistics Estonia’s open data can be shared under Creative Commons (CC) licence BY-SA 4.0”. That footer, and not a notice on the table itself, is what was read.
  • Lithuania has one source, not two. Lietuvos energetikos agentūra (ENA) both supplies the prices shown here and compiles the weekly figure sent to the European Commission, so it cannot check that figure — it is where it comes from.
  • 6 Lithuanian routes were checked and none can serve. The open data portal holds no fuel dataset, the private sites republish the same agency and keep months rather than years, and the one genuinely separate series is behind a robots file that refuses everything. That last one is not missing data — it is data this site does not take.
  • The same question was put to all three countries and got three answers. Latvia has a second source and it is independent: a different office running its own survey. Lithuania’s only candidate is the body that reports to the Commission, so it is the same compiler. Estonia’s statistical office is not the reporter and would be independent — but it publishes no price in euro to compare.
  • Full weekly history from 2005-01-03 to 2026-10-12 (1088 points). Weeks the bulletin did not publish are left as gaps, never filled in.
  • Prices from before a country adopted the euro are the bulletin's own euro conversion at that week's exchange rate.
Where it comes from