Euro purchasing power · Eurostat HICP · data to September 2026

€100 from January 1999 buys €55 of goods today. Perfect 2% inflation would have left €58.

The ECB aims for 2% a year, and even that eats 42% of a euro in 27 years. Pick a country and a start month to see what your money lost.

€100then buys what
€54.9buys today

Jan 1999

Your money, month by month

Orange: what the same money buys, counted in the prices of your start month. Drag along the line to read any month.

Real value of your moneyIf prices rose exactly 2% a year

When the damage happened

Yearly inflation (average prices against the year before). Tap a bar to restart the clock in January of that year.

Dashed line: the ECB 2% target. Orange bars are above it; faded bars are before your start.

Same start month, every country

Sources and notes
  • Primary: Eurostat, HICP (ECOICOP version 2), monthly index, 2015=100, dataset prc_hicp_minr, total all-items, last updated 4 November 2026, months January 1996 to September 2026. Eurostat database.
  • Primary: the 2% target is the ECB's definition of price stability, adopted in its July 2021 strategy review. ECB, Two per cent inflation target.
  • Method: your money's value = amount × index at start ÷ index now. This is a price index for a typical household basket, so your own basket may differ. The 2% line is amount ÷ 1.02years.
  • Before a country joined the euro, its series measures prices in that country (in its own currency then), so read it as "the money you held there". The euro-area line is Eurostat's aggregate, which changes composition as members join. Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia start in late 1996 or 1997; for earlier start months they begin at their first month.
  • Yearly bars use annual averages; 2026 compares the January to September average with the 2025 average.