Cocoa price history, 1960 to 2026
What a tonne of cocoa has cost on the world market in every month since 1960, and why the latest record looks different once the dollars are made comparable.
Latest month
US$5,920
per tonne, September 2026
Highest month on record
US$10,750
per tonne, January 2025
Since that record
down 45%
after falling as far as US$3,240 in March 2026
The whole series in one line
For most of this series cocoa traded between one and three thousand dollars a tonne. The monthly record set in July 1977, US$4,360, then stood for 47 years. When it finally went, it went quickly: the price reached US$10,750 in January 2025, about 2.5 times the old record.
The steepest twelve months in the whole series ended in April 2024, when the price stood 238% above where it had been a year earlier. The steepest fall is more recent still: by February 2026 it was 64% below the level of February 2025. The sharpest rise and the sharpest fall in 66 years of data ended within 3 years of each other.
The monthly cocoa price, 1960 to 2026
US dollars per tonne, not adjusted for inflation
Scroll the chart sideways to see the most recent years.
Source: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), release of 2 October 2026. The series is the International Cocoa Organization daily price, averaged by month. The table beneath shows annual averages; all 801 months are in the download.
Show these figures as a table
| Period | Monthly price |
|---|---|
| 1960 | US$590 |
| 1961 | US$480 |
| 1962 | US$460 |
| 1963 | US$550 |
| 1964 | US$510 |
| 1965 | US$370 |
| 1966 | US$520 |
| 1967 | US$600 |
| 1968 | US$720 |
| 1969 | US$900 |
| 1970 | US$680 |
| 1971 | US$540 |
| 1972 | US$640 |
| 1973 | US$1,130 |
| 1974 | US$1,560 |
| 1975 | US$1,250 |
| 1976 | US$2,050 |
| 1977 | US$3,790 |
| 1978 | US$3,400 |
| 1979 | US$3,290 |
| 1980 | US$2,600 |
| 1981 | US$2,080 |
| 1982 | US$1,740 |
| 1983 | US$2,120 |
| 1984 | US$2,400 |
| 1985 | US$2,250 |
| 1986 | US$2,070 |
| 1987 | US$1,990 |
| 1988 | US$1,580 |
| 1989 | US$1,240 |
| 1990 | US$1,270 |
| 1991 | US$1,200 |
| 1992 | US$1,100 |
| 1993 | US$1,120 |
| 1994 | US$1,400 |
| 1995 | US$1,430 |
| 1996 | US$1,460 |
| 1997 | US$1,620 |
| 1998 | US$1,680 |
| 1999 | US$1,140 |
| 2000 | US$910 |
| 2001 | US$1,070 |
| 2002 | US$1,780 |
| 2003 | US$1,750 |
| 2004 | US$1,550 |
| 2005 | US$1,540 |
| 2006 | US$1,590 |
| 2007 | US$1,950 |
| 2008 | US$2,580 |
| 2009 | US$2,890 |
| 2010 | US$3,130 |
| 2011 | US$2,980 |
| 2012 | US$2,390 |
| 2013 | US$2,440 |
| 2014 | US$3,060 |
| 2015 | US$3,140 |
| 2016 | US$2,890 |
| 2017 | US$2,030 |
| 2018 | US$2,290 |
| 2019 | US$2,340 |
| 2020 | US$2,370 |
| 2021 | US$2,430 |
| 2022 | US$2,390 |
| 2023 | US$3,280 |
| 2024 | US$7,330 |
| 2025 | US$7,800 |
The same years in comparable dollars
A dollar in 1977 bought far more than a dollar in 2025, so the chart above flatters the recent past. The World Bank also publishes the annual price in constant 2010 dollars, and on that measure the dearest year for cocoa is still 1977, at US$8,290 a tonne. 2025 averaged US$6,720 in the same dollars, the second-dearest year in the series and about 19% short of the top.
The other end of the series is the part usually left out. In 2000 cocoa averaged US$1,140 a tonne in constant dollars, roughly 86% below its 1977 level. Anyone farming cocoa through those two decades was selling into a price that had lost most of its buying power, which is the background to every conversation about living income since.
The annual cocoa price, in each year's dollars and in constant ones
US dollars per tonne, annual average
- Constant 2010 dollars
- Dollars of the year
Scroll the chart sideways to see the most recent years.
Source: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), release of 2 October 2026. Constant-dollar figures are the World Bank’s own, deflated by its Manufactures Unit Value index with 2010 as the base year.
The two lines cross in 2010 by construction: that is the year the constant dollar is defined as.
Show these figures as a table
| Period | Constant 2010 dollars | Dollars of the year |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | US$3,080 | US$590 |
| 1961 | US$2,450 | US$480 |
| 1962 | US$2,300 | US$460 |
| 1963 | US$2,830 | US$550 |
| 1964 | US$2,560 | US$510 |
| 1965 | US$1,830 | US$370 |
| 1966 | US$2,500 | US$520 |
| 1967 | US$2,860 | US$600 |
| 1968 | US$3,480 | US$720 |
| 1969 | US$4,110 | US$900 |
| 1970 | US$2,910 | US$680 |
| 1971 | US$2,200 | US$540 |
| 1972 | US$2,420 | US$640 |
| 1973 | US$3,660 | US$1,130 |
| 1974 | US$4,150 | US$1,560 |
| 1975 | US$2,980 | US$1,250 |
| 1976 | US$4,830 | US$2,050 |
| 1977 | US$8,290 | US$3,790 |
| 1978 | US$6,400 | US$3,400 |
| 1979 | US$5,550 | US$3,290 |
| 1980 | US$3,990 | US$2,600 |
| 1981 | US$3,180 | US$2,080 |
| 1982 | US$2,740 | US$1,740 |
| 1983 | US$3,440 | US$2,120 |
| 1984 | US$3,970 | US$2,400 |
| 1985 | US$3,780 | US$2,250 |
| 1986 | US$3,010 | US$2,070 |
| 1987 | US$2,650 | US$1,990 |
| 1988 | US$1,980 | US$1,580 |
| 1989 | US$1,560 | US$1,240 |
| 1990 | US$1,530 | US$1,270 |
| 1991 | US$1,460 | US$1,200 |
| 1992 | US$1,320 | US$1,100 |
| 1993 | US$1,290 | US$1,120 |
| 1994 | US$1,670 | US$1,400 |
| 1995 | US$1,560 | US$1,430 |
| 1996 | US$1,610 | US$1,460 |
| 1997 | US$1,880 | US$1,620 |
| 1998 | US$2,040 | US$1,680 |
| 1999 | US$1,410 | US$1,140 |
| 2000 | US$1,140 | US$910 |
| 2001 | US$1,400 | US$1,070 |
| 2002 | US$2,350 | US$1,780 |
| 2003 | US$2,200 | US$1,750 |
| 2004 | US$1,820 | US$1,550 |
| 2005 | US$1,750 | US$1,540 |
| 2006 | US$1,770 | US$1,590 |
| 2007 | US$2,050 | US$1,950 |
| 2008 | US$2,510 | US$2,580 |
| 2009 | US$2,990 | US$2,890 |
| 2010 | US$3,130 | US$3,130 |
| 2011 | US$2,680 | US$2,980 |
| 2012 | US$2,170 | US$2,390 |
| 2013 | US$2,220 | US$2,440 |
| 2014 | US$2,830 | US$3,060 |
| 2015 | US$3,200 | US$3,140 |
| 2016 | US$3,070 | US$2,890 |
| 2017 | US$2,090 | US$2,030 |
| 2018 | US$2,250 | US$2,290 |
| 2019 | US$2,350 | US$2,340 |
| 2020 | US$2,420 | US$2,370 |
| 2021 | US$2,220 | US$2,430 |
| 2022 | US$2,040 | US$2,390 |
| 2023 | US$2,880 | US$3,280 |
| 2024 | US$6,370 | US$7,330 |
| 2025 | US$6,720 | US$7,800 |
By decade
The mean of each decade’s annual averages. A ChocolateHQ calculation from the World Bank series, not a World Bank statistic.
| Decade | Constant 2010 dollars | Dollars of the year |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | US$2,800 | US$570 |
| 1970s | US$4,339 | US$1,833 |
| 1980s | US$3,030 | US$2,007 |
| 1990s | US$1,577 | US$1,342 |
| 2000s | US$1,998 | US$1,761 |
| 2010s | US$2,599 | US$2,669 |
| 2020s (6 years so far) | US$3,775 | US$4,267 |
What this price is, and is not
It is the International Cocoa Organization’s daily price: an average of the nearest three futures months on the London and New York exchanges. It is the number the trade means when it says “the cocoa price”, and it is a price for a contract, not for a sack of beans.
A farmer in Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire is paid a price fixed by the state for a whole season, usually set well before these movements happen, which is why a record on this chart did not arrive on farms when it arrived here. How cocoa farmers are paid covers that gap. For why the price moved as it did, see the cocoa price cycle and cocoa supply and stocks; for what it did to the bar in the shop, what drives the price of chocolate.
Where these figures come from
- Publisher
- World Bank — World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet)
- Release used
- Published 2 October 2026; retrieved 8 October 2026.
- Covers
- World. The International Cocoa Organization daily price: the average of the nearest three active futures trading months on the London and New York terminal markets. Monthly, January 1960 to September 2026. Annual, 1960 to 2025.
- Units
- US dollars per tonne. Monthly figures are nominal. Annual figures are given nominal and in constant 2010 US dollars.
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- How it is revised
- Reissued monthly. Recent months can be revised in a later issue, and the constant-dollar series is restated whenever the deflator is.
- Next check here
- 3 November 2026. Monthly, on about the second working day.
What was changed
- The cocoa column was extracted from three sheets of the two published workbooks; no other commodity is held.
- US$ per kilogram was multiplied by 1,000 to give US$ per tonne, the unit the cocoa trade quotes in.
- Constant-dollar figures are the World Bank's own, deflated by its Manufactures Unit Value index with 2010 as the base. ChocolateHQ applied no deflator of its own.
- No value was interpolated, smoothed or filled.
What these figures cannot tell you
It is a futures-market reference price. It is not what a farmer was paid, not what a manufacturer paid for delivered beans, and not a retail price.
The monthly series is nominal only. Comparing a 1977 monthly figure with a 2024 one compares two different dollars.
The constant-dollar series uses a manufactured-goods export deflator, not consumer inflation, so it answers what cocoa bought in traded goods rather than what it cost a household.
Download
Reusing them: World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), October 2026. Cocoa series compiled by the World Bank from International Cocoa Organization daily prices. Licence: CC BY 4.0. Converted from US$ per kilogram to US$ per tonne by ChocolateHQ.