Baltic Basket · method

How we work · Back to the figures

How we work out Food shopping

Everything on this page is generated from the module itself, so it cannot say one thing here and another on the front page.

Built from the data file published on 2026-10-18 00:40 UTC.

What this measures

Monthly national average across all retailers — not one shop's shelf.

This is a price, measured in EUR/basket.

One figure stands for the whole country.

The figure on the front page is: 11-item basket.

  • A national average across all retailers, including discounters.

What it does not measure

  • A national average is not your price. It is what the whole country paid on average; your supplier, your town and your day will differ.
  • This figure covers a whole period that has already ended. It is not the price today.

Where the numbers come from

Eurostat HICP — monthly indices and rates of change (prc_hicp_minr)ec.europa.euOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · Source published 2026-10-16 · CC-BY-4.0
Eurostat HICP — monthly data, index (prc_hicp_midx; ECOICOP v1, discontinued and frozen at December 2025) — read only to check the live series against it, never joined to itec.europa.euOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · Source published 2025-12-31 · CC-BY-4.0
Official Statistics Portal of Latvia — average retail prices of goods (PCC010m)data.stat.gov.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · Source published 2026-10-08 · CC-BY-4.0
State Data Agency of Lithuania — average monthly retail prices of the most popular products (S7R244; flows S7R244_M2021135_1, S7R244_M2021135, S7R244_M2021133)osp-rs.stat.gov.ltOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · CC-BY-4.0
Maaelu Teadmuskeskus (METK) — average retail prices of food products in Estonian shops (monthly, EUR incl. VAT; average across the e-shops of Coop, Selver, Rimi and Prisma)metk.agri.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · Source published 2026-10-07 · Attribution required (source must be cited)
Estonian Institute of Economic Research (EKI) — average retail food prices 2016-2025 (collection moved to METK in 2026)ki.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · Attribution required (source must be cited)
Statistics Estonia — consumer price statistics (indices only; CPI metadata: from 2026 built on retail chains' sales data, which the Official Statistics Act SS 32/34/35/38 bars from publication)stat.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC · CC-BY-4.0
What the kinds of source mean
  • Official — a statistics office, a regulator, or the exchange where the price was actually set.

How often it arrives, and what we do when it is late

The source publishes once a month.

A fresh figure is normally about 35 day(s) old when it reaches us, because statistics describe a period that has already ended.

The figure now on the site describes 2026-09-30 and is 18 day(s) old.

Past twice that age the module is marked as old automatically. It cannot mark itself as fresh — we compute the age from the date the data describes.

If a fetch fails, the last good figure stays up with its original date, the module is marked as not updated, and it visibly ages until the source publishes again. An old number never gets today's date.

We last ran this module at 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC.

Taxes

Different countries arrive on different bases; the table says which is which for each one.

CountryVAT rateIn the figure?Basis
Latvia—YesLatvia: prices include all taxes, as the statistics office states in the metadata for this table.
Lithuania—Not statedLithuania: the source does not state whether these prices include VAT, and we do not assume it.
Estonia—YesEstonia: prices include VAT — the source file says so, and the run stops if it ever stops saying so.

Units and conversions

Unit: EUR/basket.

Latvia — History: 261 readings, from 2005-01-31 to 2026-09-30.

Lithuania — History: 108 readings, from 2016-01-31 to 2026-09-30.

10 gap(s) in the history. Each one is listed in the data and none is filled in.

Country by country

CountryCoverageWhy
LatviaCovered—
LithuaniaCovered—
EstoniaPartly covered—

What this figure cannot tell you

  • This list of gaps covers all countries together. A gap here does not mean this particular country is missing that month — the per-country detail says which is.
  • Estonia has item prices but not all twelve basket items, so no Estonian basket total is shown. A different basket would not be the same basket.

What the module itself flags

  • The basket was rebased from 12 items to 11 in September 2026. Butter left it, and the whole history was recomputed on the 11 items, so these totals do not line up with figures published before that date. The basket changed, not shop prices.
  • Nine of the eleven basket items are also defined the same way in both countries. Milk and cheese match in quantity but not in specification, so a subtotal without them is published as well — the two answers can be compared.
  • Every item in the basket is the same quantity in each country. A product the statistics offices price in different pack sizes is left out rather than converted, because a per-kilogram figure we worked out ourselves would be our arithmetic wearing their name.
  • The basket history starts where all of its items have prices, so it is shorter than the longest single product series.
  • Latvian prices from before 2014 were recalculated from lats at the fixed rate, so an old figure is not what stood on the price tag at the time.
  • Lithuania's history is assembled from several source data flows. The joins are marked and are not price changes.

The data itself

The same figures, machine-readable:

Everything the front page draws from, in one file:

Where this module stands right now

ok

Up to date.

2026-09-30 · 18 d · 2026-10-17 05:18 UTC