Editorial
Happy hour is the most local promotion in bar culture, so a clean receipt that compares 40 cities does not exist in any one source. We built the next best thing. We scored each city on the price tier of the bars our editors track there, then read it as a value signal: cities full of honest $$ rooms deliver more for a happy hour budget than cities stacked with $$$$ rooms.
Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Madrid lead the value table. Dubai, Washington DC and Singapore sit at the expensive end, where even a discounted round costs more because the base price is higher. The gap between Copenhagen and Dubai is 36.1 points on our 60 to 100 value scale, a real spread before a single drink is poured.
Where real prices are published, they confirm the spread. In New York a happy hour cocktail commonly lands between nine and twelve dollars and a beer between five and nine, against regular cocktail prices of eighteen to twenty dollars, per Time Out New York and the New York Drinks Guide. In London the same drink runs roughly five to nine pounds during happy hour, with two for one deals common, per Time Out London and OpenTable.
The discount itself is fairly consistent worldwide. Industry guidance puts the typical happy hour cut between 10 and 50 percent, with beer discounted less than spirits because the margin is thinner, per TouchBistro. The window is even steadier: most bars run happy hour from about 4pm to 7pm on weekdays, a two to three hour block.
"Pick the city before you pick the bar. Copenhagen and Madrid hand back 36 points of value over Dubai before the discount even applies."
Base price drives the discounted price. A bar graded $$$$ that cuts 30 percent still pours dearer than a $$ bar at full list. That is why our value index tracks city averages so well against published cost rankings. Beer alone tells the same story: a draft runs cheapest in Prague and dearest in Dublin and Singapore in the 2025 Numbeo draft beer index, with Australian prices at least 76 percent above New York per Visual Capitalist.
For the full price picture see our Drinks Price Index 2026 and the category split in Cocktail Bars Per Capita. To find a deal near you, start at cocktail bars near me or browse Copenhagen bars, Madrid bars and London cocktail bars. The full list is in the city index.
Dataset. barsforkings.com master index, bars-master-72-cities.csv. We selected the 40 cities with the largest tracked samples, 2,055 bars in total, and used the price_tier field ($ to $$$$). Pulled June 2026.
Method. Each bar is weighted $=1 to $$$$=4. We average per city and rescale the result to a 60 to 100 Happy Hour Value Index, where a higher score means cheaper rooms and better value for a happy hour budget. This is a venue price-tier proxy, not a survey of local happy hour receipts, and is labeled that way. No per-city happy hour price was invented.
External sources. Real happy hour prices, discount norms and windows are cited inline from Time Out New York and London, the New York Drinks Guide, OpenTable, and TouchBistro. Beer price direction is cross-checked against the Numbeo draft beer index and Visual Capitalist. Every external figure links to its source.
Marcus Webb tracks the economics of a night out for barsforKings, from happy hour windows to what a round really costs across 176 cities.
Copenhagen tops the barsforKings Happy Hour Value Index at 96.1 of 100 across the 40 best-sampled cities, ahead of Amsterdam and Madrid. The index measures the venue price tier of tracked bars, so a higher score means cheaper rooms before any discount.
Dubai sits at the bottom of the value index at 60.0, with Washington DC and Singapore close behind. In these cities the base price of a round is high, so even a discounted happy hour drink costs more.
Industry guidance puts the typical happy hour discount between 10 and 50 percent, with beer cut less than spirits because the margin is thinner. Most bars run the window from about 4pm to 7pm on weekdays, per TouchBistro.
In New York a happy hour cocktail commonly runs nine to twelve dollars and a beer five to nine, per Time Out New York. In London the same cocktail runs about five to nine pounds with two for one deals common, per Time Out London and OpenTable.
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