Hot take - soda is priced correctly in 2026. It's a luxury and is quite bad for your health.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Mildly Infuriating
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I just wish the reason would be a tax on sugar which is then used to subsidise more healthy options. But I don't believe that to be the case here. :(
That’s not a bad idea. It is addictive. Tax it like alcohol and tobacco. I’ve watched a subset of diabetics scream that they need sugar no matter what healthcare tries to say about it. Tears. More often, anger and spiteful overconsumption in reaction to being told no. (A subset, not all.)
If a diabetic has low blood sugar, then they literally DO need sugar, and fast!
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That's what we are doing in Finland. Sugar free drinks are taxed at 20c/l but other drinks can go up to 59c/l depending on the sugar amount
Just checked prices from one grocery store and coke zero 24-pack is 15.50€ while the regular one is 19.50€
Overall, Coke is most affordable compared with minimum wage in England, especially when Coke Zero is on offer, then Helsinki; in the US it takes the most minimum-wage work to buy a litre, and because regular and sugar-free cost exactly the same, there’s no price incentive at all to choose the sugar-free one.
In England for a 24 pack (330ml?), sugar is £15 (€17.5, $20 USD), sugar free is £12 with a deal for £8.50 (€10, $11.5 USD), no deals for the sugar one! £12.71 is minimum wage here (€14.86, $17.21 USD). In US Walmart I see 24 pack of sugar and non sugar for $15.37 USD (12 OZx24) and US minimum wage is $7.25 USD (£5.40, €6.30).
| Location and drink | EUR per litre | GBP per litre | USD per litre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helsinki — regular Coke | €2.46 | £2.10 | $2.85 |
| Helsinki — Coke Zero | €1.96 | £1.67 | $2.26 |
| England — regular Coke | €2.22 | £1.89 | $2.56 |
| England — Coke Zero, normal price | €1.77 | £1.52 | $2.05 |
| England — Coke Zero, offer price | €1.26 | £1.07 | $1.45 |
| US Walmart — regular Coke | €1.56 | £1.33 | $1.80 |
| US Walmart — Coke Zero | €1.56 | £1.33 | $1.80 |
| Location and wage benchmark | EUR/hour | GBP/hour | USD/hour | Work for 1 litre of regular Coke | Work for 1 litre of Coke Zero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helsinki — first-year supermarket minimum | €11.61 | £9.92 | $13.43 | 12.7 minutes | 10.1 minutes |
| UK — adult minimum wage | €14.87 | £12.71 | $17.20 | 8.9 minutes | 7.2 minutes normally; 5.1 on offer |
| US — federal minimum wage | €6.27 | £5.36 | $7.25 | 14.9 minutes | 14.9 minutes |
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That’s definitely one take on unfettered corporate greed.
I would agree with you If those prices weren’t being set by corporations raking in record profits.
You're not wrong. But by that logic water based products would be cheaper. Which it sadly isn't. Often the contrary.
The US very rarely uses price to incentivize good practices and vice versa.
Yes. Agreed
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Funny story, here (Denmark) it's actually cheaper than in 2017, because people have stopped buying Pepsi and Coca-Cola, so they are almost constantly on sale at prices way lower than before Trump became president for his 2nd term.
Coca Cola and Pepsi need to have lower prices now than local brands to sell!
Personally I still buy a local brand, even when it's 50% more expensive than American brands.
Because fuck USA for electing Trump.
Thats amazing. I wish the entire country here in Canada was boycotting as much as some of us. We also seriously need way more local brands that compete with coke
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I'm happy I never developed a soda habit.
I pretty much only buy snacks and junks for parties. A normal sized bag of chips was like $7 yesterday. The smaller tostitos were labeled like $5.50.
I'd love to see some sort of general strike or mass boycott, but there's not enough organization, and things aren't bad enough for it to happen en masse spontaneously.
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You ever notice how graphic design is done moving? 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017 all would've had different designs for everything, at least the Walmart sign.
Change the price and you could convince me you took this picture yesterday.
Only exception might be the sprite logo.
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How much is it now?
Regular prices for my location in the US Midwest are around $11 for a 12-pack of Coca-Cola products — that’s twelve 12oz cans. Sales are frequently run for “buy 3 (12-packs), get 3 free”.
You can get roughly the same per-can sale price by buying flats of 35 cans from warehouse clubs like Costco every day without waiting for a sale, but the warehouse clubs don’t carry every Coca-Cola product, usually just Coke, Coke Zero Sugar, Diet Coke, and Sprite.
Pepsi products cost roughly the same.
12oz can is 355ml very close to the 33 cl or 330ml or 1/3 liter in Europe.
The price you state is almost $1 per can.
Here (Denmark) we get 1 can for $0.30 when on sale, which they almost always are now, because they've lost sales to local brands.
When I see people buy these at the cheap, I sometimes comment in a very soft overbearing voice: Nonono we aren't buying American, like gently correcting a small child.
Edit PS:
The price in Denmark includes 25% sales tax.
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So that'd be $33 for 6 12-packs roughly $5,50 per pack or like 250% of the price in the image?
In the states, $5.50 is considered a good sale now. I have seen single 12pks go for $12 not on sale.
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Those are 12 packs which is $8.57 right now.
That's almost 400% increase, I would not consider that mildly infuriating. Yikes.
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tbf, a common price for coke and pepsi 12pks was $2 going as far back as the mid 1980s. it was due to get 'adjusted' some in that time. what is ridiculous, though, is the $8-9+ they're asking for today, when the price of store brands has only doubled (or less) in that same forty years.
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20 cents a can. Not bad.
The real crime is in pre-chilled drinks. A 20oz Gatorade is about $4 here now. Minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour.
"And then we looked them dead in the eye and said, "Inflation is only 5% year-on-year", and they actually nodded along like we were reading them a bedtime story."
I used to sell soda at work. We'd go buy cases when it went on sale and sell it to the people.
A sale in 2000/2001 would cost you ~ $0.20 a can. Stuff not on sale would be a touch over a quarter, so we sold the soda for a quarter. Never made any money, we just didn't feel like paying $0.75 a can when the company stopped giving out free soda and put in a vending machine.
For the next few years, the sales would be closer to a quarter a can with an occasional sale being closer to 20 cents.
Costco is currently around $0.61 for Diet coke.
This is a 2017 ad for a sale price, 20 cans, $4.99.
This is the first 20 can pack I found at today’s price. Might cost a little more than regular coke because sugar free, but it costs a shitload more than the 2017 price.
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Whats the point of this? Yes things were cheaper in the past.
It might be worth noting that coca colas profits were down 55% in 2017, lots of people were quitting soda at that time. Hence the sale.
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