quanto costa?

Prices and money in Italian

A price in Italian is a number, euro, and usually e plus the cents. Two things trip English speakers: euro has no plural, and the decimal point is a comma.

Updated 8 October 2026

Reading prices aloud

On the labelSaid
1,00 €un euro
2,50 €due euro e cinquanta
3,80 €tre euro e ottanta
12,99 €dodici euro e novantanove
23,40 €ventitré euro e quaranta
149,00 €centoquarantanove euro
1.250,00 €milleduecentocinquanta euro

The cents are often left as a bare number after e; centesimi can be added. With the price in front of you, Italians also drop the word euro: tre e cinquanta.

euro and centesimo

euro does not changeTreccani lists euro as masculine and invariable: un euro, due euro, cento euro. Before it, uno becomes un as it would before any masculine noun, and so can a compound ending in uno: the Enciclopedia dell’Italiano allows ottantun votanti beside ottantuno, so 21 € is ventun euro or ventuno euro.
centesimo, centesimiA cent is un centesimo, the hundredth part of a euro, plural centesimi: cinquanta centesimi. It is the same word as the ordinal “hundredth” on the ordinals page.

The comma and the point

Italy writes decimals with a comma and groups thousands with a point, the reverse of English. A price list reads 2,50, 1.250,00, 15.000. A learner who reads 1.250 as “one point two five” is out by a factor of a thousand, so it is worth showing a real Italian receipt or menu in class.

Large sums

Above a million, milione is a noun and takes di: un milione di euro, due milioni di euro. A billion euro is un miliardo di euro, not a bilione; the big numbers page explains why.

In the classroom

Prices give a reason to practise 1 to 100 twice in one number. The worksheet generator makes the number sheets; for a price lesson, pair a 1 to 100 Write the figure sheet with a menu from an Italian café and have pupils read the prices aloud.

Questions teachers ask

Is the plural of euro euro or euri in Italian?

euro. Treccani’s Vocabolario lists euro, the currency, as a masculine noun and invariable, so it has the same form in the plural: un euro, due euro, mille euro. "Euri" is heard in casual speech but is not the standard written form.

How do you read a price like 3,50 € in Italian?

tre euro e cinquanta, or in full tre euro e cinquanta centesimi. The comma is the decimal separator in Italy, so 3,50 is three and a half, and a point separates thousands: 1.250 € is milleduecentocinquanta euro.

What money did Italy use before the euro?

The lira. Treccani’s entry for euro records it as the single currency of the European Union in circulation from 2002, which is when euro notes and coins replaced lire in Italian pockets. Prices from before then, in old films and books, run to thousands of lire for everyday things.

Sources