The price of a bola de berlim.
Every August the press asks what a bola de berlim costs on the beach, and every August the answer is one reporter, one beach, one anecdote. No public body records this price, so there has never been a series. This page builds one. Log what you paid and it joins the list below, beach by beach.
The idea was @_miguelferreira's, who asked in public for a national database tracking this price over the years.
No prices logged for 2026 yet. The last published figure is 2.00 euros, from a survey of 14 beaches in 2025.
The price over time
Journalism up to 2025, reader submissions from 2026. 5 years with no published beach price are left out of the chart; they are shown as gaps in the full list below.
Add a price
Seen a bola de berlim? Log the price.
Every submission joins the public series on this page, beach by beach. Takes fifteen seconds.
What the data says so far
Showing prices paid on the sand, from a roaming seller or a beach bar. That is the question this tracker was set.
No submissions yet
Nobody has logged a price yet. The first submission starts the series.
The series, year by year
One list, from 2012 to 2026, with the source marked on every row. Everything up to 2025 is journalism, because there was nothing else; from there on it is what readers send. Only one year was ever a real survey, and 5 years have no published beach price at all.
- 2012NacionalBone-off quote1.35 €
- 2013no published price-
- 2014Praia de Cabanas, TaviraBone-off quote1.20 €
- 2015no published price-
- 2016no published price-
- 2017no published price-
- 2018NacionalBone-off quote1.50 €
- 2019Praia da Rocha, PortimãoDderived, not written1.20 €
- 2020Praia da Rocha, PortimãoBone-off quote1.50 €
- 2021no published price-
- 2022AlgarveBone-off quote1.70 €
- DAlgarve, praia não identificadacontradiz os 1,70 que a CNN Portugal noticiou para o Algarve nesse mesmo verão1.20 €
- 2023Burgau e Monte GordoBrecalled a year later1.80 €
- DPraia não identificadapreço anunciado no papel do vendedor1.20 €
- DPraia não identificadapreço realmente cobrado, 30 cêntimos acima do anunciado1.50 €
- DAlgarve, praia não identificada1.50 €
- DPraia não identificadasem creme1.20 €
- DPraia não identificadacom creme1.50 €
- DPraia S. João da Caparica, Almada2.00 €
- DPraia dos Tomatessem água balnear identificada com este nome no registo da APA2.00 €
- DMonte Gordo, Vila Real de Santo Antóniocoincide exatamente com o valor noticiado pelo Observador para Monte Gordo nesse verão1.70 €
- DAlvor, Portimão2.00 €
- DBarlavento algarvio1.80 €
- DBarlavento algarvio2.00 €
- 2024Burgau, Monte Gordo, Altura, CarvalhalBone-off quote2.00 €
- 202514 praias, de Quarteira ao PêgoAsurvey2.00 €
- 2026no published price-
Weak evidence, and what was excluded
The grade D rows above come from one Reddit thread. They sit in the series but never set a year: the Monte Gordo report matches the reporting for that summer exactly, while the 2022 report of 1,20 contradicts the 1,70 CNN reported for the Algarve. Both are shown. First-hand purchaser reports, with no photograph of the price. We could not confirm the quotes ourselves: Reddit blocks automated reads. The thread is linked so anyone can check.
Ena minha infância, cada bola de Berlim custava 1€ A childhood recollection, with no year and no beach. Grade E is excluded from the series by definition.
First, the correction
The claim going round is that a bola de berlim cost 80 cents in 2018 and costs 2 euros today. False: The 80 cents was the price over a bakery counter, never on the sand: on the beach in 2018 it already cost between 1 and 2 euros.
In 2025 the same product ran from 1.50 euros in Quarteira to 3.50 in Pego, Grândola, in the same month. The spread across beaches is a bigger story than the drift across years.
Who is allowed to sell, and at what price
This explains the prices better than inflation does. Selling on the sand needs a municipal licence, councils issue a fixed and often tiny number per beach, and where that number is one the holder has a lawful monopoly. On a concessioned beach the concessionaire can go further and write the shelf price into the contract.
The 15,000 euro condition
A beach concession asked a vendor for 15,000 euros for the right to sell there, on one condition: the bola had to be priced at 3.50 euros. The highest price in the country was not set by a vendor. It was a contract term.
Numa concessão nessa praia, pediram-lhe 15 mil euros para poder vender naquele local e com uma condição: a bola tinha de estar a 3,5 euros.
Beaches where the council issues exactly one licence
At Burgau (Vila do Bispo) the council issues a single licence, for about 100 euros a year. One vendor, no competition, and a price of 2,00 to 2,50 euros.
André Carmo tem o monopólio naquela praia, onde a Câmara de Vila do Bispo só atribui uma licença para a venda (que lhe custa à volta de 100 euros por ano).
Prices agreed between vendors, not competed
- Alagoa-Alturacusta 1,80 euros, por decisão conjunta dos vendedores
- Monte Gordoem Monte Gordo está nos 2 euros, porque a maioria dos vendedores na praia ou fabricantes assim o decidiu
- Geralnuma praia onde se vende a 2 euros, se alguém vender a 1,80 euros por unidade, os concorrentes caem-lhe em cima
Licence counts councils do publish
- Marinha Grandesorteio de 7 licenças especificamente para venda de bolas de berlim nas praias do concelho, por exemplo 2 na Praia Velha
- Vagosprocedimento próprio para bolas de berlim, com 3 licenças para as praias do concelho
- Almadaedital de venda no areal com um número máximo de licenças por zona (Cova do Vapor a São João, Costa da Caparica, Fonte da Telha)
- Figueira da Fozedital com os lugares disponíveis por praia (Buarcos, Cabo Mondego, Costa de Lavos, Cova-Gala, Cabedelo)
- Gondomaredital para venda ambulante de saco às costas na praia do concelho, atribuída por sorteio
What is not published
No Portuguese municipality publishes, as open data or as a systematic annual document, a register of who holds a street-vending licence on each beach. What is published are regulations and notices giving the number of places and the rules of the draw, never the list of holders. That is why prices cannot currently be joined to the people licensed to charge them.
Where this data comes from
The beach list is official.
Every beach in the form comes from APA's national registry of identified bathing waters (InfoPraia / SNIRH), published on dados.gov.pt under CC BY 4.0: 755 beaches across mainland Portugal, the Azores and Madeira, from the 2024 bathing season. That registry is also where the Blue Flag and beach-concession flags on this page come from. It is the fixed baseline: we did not invent or edit the list.
Beach list: APA / SNIRH InfoPraia, 755 identified bathing waters, 2024 season, CC BY 4.0.
The prices are not official, because no official price exists.
Nobody records it. INE's price index tracks a pastry category, never one product. ASAE inspects hygiene. APA licenses who may trade on a beach, not what they charge. So every price here was typed in by a member of the public: a crowd-sourced sample, not a statistic.
Sources and method
Prices come from the public and are not verified one by one. Three filters sit on top. Anything outside 0.20 to 15 euros is refused. Between 1 and 5 euros nothing is ever set aside, because real beach prices genuinely range that widely: the 2025 survey found 1,50 in Quarteira and 3,50 at Pego in the same month. Outside that band, a price far from the distribution is kept but left out of the published figures. And one sender can add at most two prices per beach per day, enforced with an anonymous identifier that changes daily: not an address, not reversible, useless for linking anyone across two days. We publish the median, so even a joke that slips through cannot move the headline. Prices dated more than 60 days back are marked as recalled from memory. No address, name or email is stored.