First Date Cost Index 2026
The data
160 published prices from 25 US cities, each with its source and the date we read it. Free to download and reuse.
Download
first-date-cost-index-2026.csv · CSV, UTF-8 · 160 rows · 37 KB · collected September 27, 2026
What the dataset contains
The dataset behind the First Date Cost Index records what the parts of a typical first date for two cost in 25 large US metro areas: a cocktail, a main course, a movie ticket, an art museum admission and a 5-mile taxi ride. Every price was published by the venue or regulator that sets it, on a menu, a price list or an official tariff, and read by our editors on September 27, 2026. The rows draw on 113 distinct source pages.
From these prices the index builds its headline figures. Dinner and drinks for two, with a 20% tip and before sales tax, runs from $74.28 in San Antonio to $151.20 in Miami; the median city comes in at $124.80.
Columns
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
city, state | Metro area (principal city) and state |
item | What was priced (see the list below) |
price_usd | Price in US dollars, before sales tax and tip |
source_name | The venue, cinema, museum or agency that published the price |
source_url | The page or PDF where the price is published |
collected_on | The date we read the price (YYYY-MM-DD) |
notes | How the figure was derived: menu section, number of items, range, exclusions, surcharges |
Items
- Cocktail (
cocktail_median): the median of all alcoholic cocktails on the venue's current published list, excluding happy-hour prices. - Main course (
dinner_entree_median): the median of the main-course section of a full-service, mid-range restaurant's dinner menu. Dishes for two, market-price items and tasting menus are excluded. - Movie ticket (
movie_ticket_adult_evening): one adult evening ticket at an independent cinema that publishes a fixed price. - Museum admission (
museum_adult_admission): standard adult admission at the city's flagship art museum; free museums are recorded as 0.00. - Taxi (
taxi_fare_5mi_one_way_computed): a 5-mile ride computed from the official meter tariff, with flat per-trip charges included and time-of-day or airport surcharges left out. - Same-menu benchmark (
chain_north_italia_*): identical dishes and the cocktail median at North Italia locations, to show how much the same plate costs in different cities. - Latte (
latte): supplementary; too few venues publish one to compare cities, so it is not part of any total.
How the totals are built
All totals are for two people, in US dollars, before sales tax. A 20% tip is added to bar and restaurant service, and nothing to tickets, admissions or taxis. Where a city has two venues for an item, the city figure is the average of the two. A drinks date is two cocktails plus tip; dinner and drinks is two main courses and two cocktails plus tip; the classic first date adds a 5-mile cab each way for one person.
Limits to keep in mind
- Venues were chosen by the editors among well-known, full-service date spots that publish prices online. One or two venues cannot represent every price in a city.
- Online menus can lag behind the menu on the table, and some venues say so. Notes flag these cases row by row.
- Coverage varies by item: cocktails and main courses cover all 25 cities; taxi fares, movie tickets and museum admissions are missing where no official or fixed published price was found.
- Sales taxes and venue surcharges are not added; surcharges are listed in the notes.
License and how to credit
The dataset is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. You may copy, share and adapt it, including for commercial use, as long as you give credit. Please credit it as:
Smart Dating, First Date Cost Index 2026, smartdatingjournal.com/first-date-cost-index/ (CC BY 4.0)
The prices themselves were published by the venues and agencies named in each row. To report an error in a row, see our contact page.