Cost of living in Bali: what the official statistics say

This page is for a foreigner who wants to know what the official statistics say about the cost of living in Bali. It takes figures only from official publishers: BPS Provinsi Bali and BPS Indonesia (the statistics offices), the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (electricity and fuel), the Ministry of Home Affairs (how water tariffs are set), the regency of Badung (one water tariff decree) and Pertamina Patra Niaga (the fuel price list). It is general information, not legal advice.

What these figures are not. They are averages for the households that BPS surveyed in Bali, and tariffs written for the customers of a utility. They are not prices that a foreigner will pay, and this site gives no estimate of a foreigner's monthly budget. We give no rents or villa prices, we draw no comparison between Bali and another place, and we name no shop, school or hospital.

We used the tables and texts as they stood on 6 October 2026: the national household survey of March 2025 (Susenas) in the tables of BPS Bali updated on 19 February and 31 March 2026 and in its publication on the pattern of consumption (released on 30 July 2026, revised on 16 September 2026); the consumer price tables and press release of BPS Bali of 1 October 2026; the cost of living survey of 2022 (SBH 2022, released on 5 February 2024); Permen ESDM 7/2024 on electricity tariffs and the ministry's press release of 30 June 2026; Permendagri 71/2016 as amended by Permendagri 21/2020 on water tariffs and Keputusan Bupati Badung 1058/01/HK/2025; Perpres 191/2014 as last amended by Perpres 117/2021 (amendments 43/2018, 69/2021, 117/2021) on fuel prices, and the price list of Pertamina Patra Niaga dated 2 September 2026.

Not covered here: minimum wages and the cost of employing staff (the page on hiring staff), renting a home (the page on renting a home), schools and school fees (the page on schools), health insurance contributions (the page on health insurance) and what each regency or city is like (the area pages). Where two texts differ we say so, and the last section lists what we could not confirm.

BPS measures spending through the Susenas, the national household survey. The round of March 2025 covered 345,000 households across Indonesia, with a response rate of 99.60 percent. Food is recorded for the last week and non-food goods for the last month or year, and the food counted comes from purchases, from the household's own production or from gifts. A figure is therefore what a household consumed, not what a unit of anything costs.

The figure is per person: the spending of a household divided by its members. In Bali the average household has 3.76 members. The figure is also an estimate from a sample. For Bali as a whole BPS gives Rp1,964,618 a month with a 95 percent interval of Rp1,893,875 to Rp2,035,361; for a regency the interval is wider, and the table below gives it for each.

An average is not a typical household. BPS divides Bali's residents by their spending: the 40 percent who spend least spend Rp911,743 per person a month, the middle 40 percent Rp1,875,441 and the 20 percent who spend most Rp4,128,136. The average for Bali lies a little above the middle group. None of the groups is a budget for a foreigner.

We found no BPS text that says whether the households of foreign residents are part of the survey sample (see the last section). Read every figure as describing the households BPS surveyed.

BPS Bali's own summary names Badung as the regency with the highest average (Rp2,709,730) and Karangasem as the lowest (Rp1,080,257). Kota Denpasar is close to Badung. These are amounts that households spent, and they depend on income and on how many people live together as much as on prices. A high figure does not show that goods cost more in that place, and a low one does not show that they cost less.

BPS records that the average for Bali rose from Rp1,872,760 in 2024 to Rp1,964,618 in 2025 (4.90 percent). In urban areas the average is Rp2,192,171 and in rural areas Rp1,329,881; BPS gives a rise of 5.52 percent for urban and 0.44 percent for rural areas. We have not adjusted any of these amounts for price changes.

The share of food falls as spending rises, which BPS links to Engel's law: 54.38 percent for the 40 percent who spend least, 45.82 percent for the middle 40 percent and 33.76 percent for the 20 percent who spend most (next table). In the regency table the food share runs from 37.48 percent (Kota Denpasar) to 53.20 percent (Buleleng).

The inflation in the table below is the change of the consumer price index (IHK) against the same month of the year before. The index follows the prices of a fixed basket of goods and services that households buy, with 2022 as the base year (2022 = 100). BPS Bali measures it in four places: Kabupaten Tabanan, Kabupaten Badung, Singaraja and Kota Denpasar, and publishes a figure for the province and for Indonesia beside them. The other regencies are not measured.

For September 2026, released on 1 October 2026, BPS gives Bali province an inflation of 3.79 percent year on year, with an index of 113.77. Month on month it was 0.32 percent, and since the start of the year 2.49 percent. The highest rate was in Tabanan, 4.54 percent (index 115.93), and the lowest in Kota Denpasar, 3.42 percent (index 115.13).

Between January and September 2026 the year on year rate for Bali province was between 2.08 percent (April) and 3.89 percent (February).

A rate of 3.79 percent means that the basket cost 3.79 percent more in September 2026 than in September 2025. It does not say what the basket costs, and it says nothing about prices in a place that BPS does not measure.

BPS runs a Survei Biaya Hidup (SBH, cost of living survey) and labels the publication of its results five-yearly (publikasi 5 tahunan). The round of 2022 was the thirteenth since 1953. It covered 150 regencies and cities (38 provincial capitals and 112 others) and was held to renew the base year of the consumer price index. Its results, released on 5 February 2024, are the basket of commodities and the value of what households consumed of each, place by place. Chapter 18 covers Bali: the province and the four places in the section above.

The survey is not a comparison of what living costs in different places, and it gives no prices: it records what households consumed, and BPS turns that into the weights of the price index. We found no BPS publication that compares the price level between Bali's regencies, or between Bali and another place, and no round of the survey after 2022.

The regional minimum wages for 2026 are set by decrees of the governor of Bali made in December 2025 (for the provincial wage, Kepgub Bali 1011/03-M/HK/2025 of 19 December 2025). The page on hiring staff holds the figures for the province, for each regency or city and for the sector wages, with the decrees; we do not repeat them here so that the two pages cannot differ.

A minimum wage is the least that an employer may pay a worker. It is a legal floor, not a measure of what living costs, and the spending per person in the tables above is not a wage.

The tariff of the electricity that PLN supplies is set by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources. Permen ESDM 7/2024 of 6 June 2024 replaced Permen ESDM 28/2016 and its five amendments. The BPK database lists the regulation as in force and lists no amendment, and we found none; our search is not exhaustive. The technical rules for applying the tariffs are set by the board of PLN (Pasal 5).

For 13 groups, including the five household groups in the table, the tariff is adjusted every three months when the exchange rate, the oil price, inflation or the coal reference price move up or down (Pasal 6(1) and (2)). PLN must announce an adjustment to its customers at least one month before it takes effect (Pasal 6(9)).

On 30 June 2026 the ministry announced that the tariffs of the 13 non-subsidised groups for the third quarter, July to September 2026, did not rise and stay as they were (press release 038.Pers/04/SJI/2026), and that the 24 subsidised groups did not change either. We have not read the announcements of the quarters between June 2024 and June 2026, so the table shows the figures printed in the regulation, not a figure that we confirmed for each quarter.

On 6 October 2026 we found no announcement for the fourth quarter (October to December 2026) on the ministry's site, and the PLN page lists the document of the third quarter as the latest. For the tariff of the day, check the PLN page or your bill.

Two texts differ. The PLN page says that the adjustment is made every month; the regulation says every three months (Pasal 6(2)), and so does the ministry's press release. We follow the regulation.

The regulation also sets block tariffs and a load charge for 450 VA and 900 VA (R-1/TR); we do not copy them. Business groups have their own tariffs, which we do not give.

Piped water is supplied by a utility owned by a regency or a city, and its tariff is set by the head of the region (the bupati or the mayor), not by the state. Permendagri 71/2016 as amended by Permendagri 21/2020 says in Pasal 25(1) that the head of the region sets the water tariff at the latest in November each year, and in Pasal 25(2) that the decision is sent to the Minister of Home Affairs. Each regency and city therefore has its own text, it can change from year to year, and the amounts differ by class of customer and by how much water is used in a month.

We read one text: Keputusan Bupati Badung 1058/01/HK/2025 of 31 December 2025, in force from 1 January 2026 (Lampiran I). We read none of the other eight, and one regency's table must not be taken for another's. The table gives the four household classes of that decree, which are set by the connected electricity power. The decree also sets a fixed monthly charge of Rp13,000 (Beban Tetap Berlangganan) and has classes for social, business and special customers, which we do not copy.

Perpres 191/2014 as last amended by Perpres 117/2021 (amendments 43/2018, 69/2021, 117/2021) divides fuel into classes. The Minister of Energy sets the retail price of the "certain" fuels, which are kerosene and diesel (Pasal 14(1) with Pasal 3(1)), and of the "special assignment" fuels, a gasoline of RON 88 or higher distributed in the assignment area, which is all of Indonesia (Pasal 14(1), Pasal 3(2), (3) as amended by Perpres 117/2021). The retail price of the "general" fuels is calculated and set by the business entity under a ceiling formula (Pasal 14A(1)). The price list does not say which class a product belongs to, and we do not classify the products here.

The price list is headed "update per tanggal 2 September 2026". On 21 September 2026 Pertamina Patra Niaga stated that the prices of non-subsidised fuel had not changed on that day. We found no official statement for 1 October 2026; press reports, which we do not rely on, say that prices stayed the same, and the list on the company's page still carries the date of 2 September. A price can change at the start of a month, so check the page.

BPS counts the spending of households in Bali; no official text we read says what a foreigner pays. The tariffs above are for customers in general, and most of what a household buys has no official price. Prices of food, services, rents, schools and care differ by place, by the way a person lives and by whom he buys from, and this site collects none of them.

An average of the households BPS surveyed is therefore not a budget for anyone who moves to Bali, and multiplying it by a number of people would give a figure that no official text supports. Anyone who plans a budget should work from written quotes for what he will actually buy. For the costs that the law fixes, such as taxes, fees and permits, use the other pages of this guide.

Whether the households of foreign residents are in the Susenas sample, and whether a foreigner who lives in Bali is counted among the residents whose spending BPS reports. We found no BPS text on it.

Two BPS publications give the same estimate for Bali (Rp1,964,618) with different margins. The national publication of October 2025 (Tabel 8.6, whose footer names the September survey while its title says March 2025) gives a standard error of 27,604 and an interval of Rp1,910,514 to Rp2,018,721. The Bali publication of July 2026 (Lampiran 19) gives a standard error of 36,022 and the interval used on this page. We used the Bali publication, which is later and local, and did not find the reason for the difference.

Whether the rise of the average spending from 2024 to 2025 is net of price changes. The summary of BPS Bali says only that it rose.

Whether BPS Bali published a cost of living survey report for Bali alone, or a survey round after 2022. We found none; the 2022 publication of weights is national, with a chapter on Bali.

Electricity: the tariff announcement for October to December 2026; the announcements of the quarters between June 2024 and June 2026; which tariff group a villa let to guests belongs to; and whether the PLN page's "every month" has any basis in a text.

Water: the tariff texts of the other eight regencies and cities. We saw references to newer decrees on the pages of some utilities but did not read the decrees, and we do not give figures from them.

Fuel: the prices of 1 October 2026 from an official source; which class (certain, special assignment or general) each product belongs to; and the dash that the list shows for one product (Pertamax Green 95) in Bali, which we read as not listed for Bali, while press reports speak of a price for it.

Whether any official text gives the cost of living of a foreigner. We found none. We also could not confirm that no amendment of Permen ESDM 7/2024 or Permendagri 71/2016 followed the ones named, or of Perpres 191/2014 followed Perpres 117/2021; the BPK database lists none, and our search is not exhaustive.

To the data service of BPS Bali (PST): Which table gives the spending per person for my regency, for which year, and with which margin? Are the households of foreign residents in the sample? In which places is the consumer price index measured, and has that changed since September 2026?

To PLN: Which tariff group is my connection in, and since which date? Which tariff applies in the current quarter? Is a minimum bill applied to my connection? Please give the answers in writing.

To the water utility of your regency or city: Which decree sets my tariff, and from which date? Which class am I in? What are the blocks and the fixed monthly charge?

To Pertamina Patra Niaga (contact centre 135): Which price applies in Bali today for the fuel I use, and where on the price list is the date shown?

Keep, for every figure you rely on: the table or text, the period it covers and the date shown on the publisher's page. The figures are updated on the dates given above and will change.