Magkano: How to Ask "How Much" in Tagalog

If you only ever learn one Tagalog word for a trip to the Philippines, make it this one. You will reach for it at the market stall, the sari-sari store window, and the jeepney door dozens of times a day. The beautiful thing about magkano is that it does the whole job by itself: no grammar, no verb, just point and ask. By the end of this guide you will be able to ask a price, tell it apart from the words it gets confused with, sound polite, understand the answer, and even haggle without being rude.

What does “magkano” mean?

Magkano is an interrogative pronoun meaning “how much” — but only in the sense of price or an amount of money. It is pronounced mag-KA-no, with the stress on the second syllable, not the first. Beginners often flatten it to MAG-ka-no, so say it out loud a few times until the second-syllable beat feels natural.

Because it covers money rather than countable objects, magkano also works for any monetary amount, not just shopping: Magkano ang kinita mo? means “How much did you earn?” What it never does is count physical things — that is a different word entirely, which trips up nearly every learner.

How to ask “how much” — the core patterns

The everyday frame is Magkano (po) ang [thing]? or, when you are pointing, Magkano (po) ito/iyan/iyon? The little word po is a respect particle (more on that below) — drop it among friends, keep it with vendors and elders.

Tagalog	English	When to Use
Magkano po ito?	How much is this, please?	Item in your hand
Magkano iyan?	How much is that?	Item near the vendor
Magkano ang isang kilo ng bigas?	How much is one kilo of rice?	Per-kilo price
Magkano po ang lahat?	How much for everything?	Asking for the total

The demonstratives matter: ito is “this” (near you), iyan is “that” (near the person you are talking to), and iyon is “that over there.” Pointing at a vendor’s goods is usually Magkano iyan? because the item is near them — but once it is in your hand, ito is right. When you want the bill, Magkano po ang lahat? asks for the grand total, where lahat means “all.”

Magkano vs. ilan vs. gaano — don’t mix these up

Here is the distinction that separates a confident shopper from a confused one. English smushes “how much” and “how many” together, but Tagalog splits them across three words depending on what you are asking about.

Tagalog	English	Answer you'll get
Magkano ang manok?	How much is the chicken?	A peso amount
Ilan ang manok?	How many chickens?	A number (dalawa = two)
Gaano karami ang tubig?	How much water is there?	A description (madami / kaunti)

The rule of thumb: money goes to magkano; things you can count go to ilan and come back as a number; mass or degree with no exact count goes to gaano karami and comes back as “a lot” or “a little.” A handy bridge phrase is Gaano kamahal? — “How expensive?” — which uses gaano with mahal (“expensive”). For the full family of question words like sino, saan, and kailan, our guide to Tagalog question words lays them all out side by side.

Be polite: po, pabili po, and paki-

Politeness is what turns a tourist from “demanding” into “respectful.” Three small tools do most of the work. The first is po, the all-purpose respect particle — roughly “sir/ma’am” baked into the sentence. It slips in after the first word or near the end: both Magkano po? and Magkano po ito? sound natural. Our deeper dive on po and opo covers exactly when to use it.

The second is pabili po, the standard polite way to open a purchase, especially at a sari-sari store window. Walk up, say Pabili po ng tinapay (“I’d like to buy some bread, please”), and name your item. The third is the paki- prefix, which attaches to a verb to mean “please do this for me.”

Tagalog	English
Pakisupot po ito.	Please put this in a bag.
Pakihingi po ng resibo.	A receipt, please.

Pair paki- verbs with po and you have maximum courtesy. Ask for a resibo (“receipt”) this way and you will sound like you have been doing it for years.

Understanding the answer: reading Filipino prices

Asking is half the battle; understanding the reply is the other half. Filipino prices use a mixed number system. Round hundreds and thousands tend to use native Tagalog — isang daan (100), limang daan (500), isang libo (1,000) — while small and odd amounts at the market lean on Spanish-derived numbers like bente (20), singkwenta (50), and sitenta (70).

Tagalog	English
Dalawampung piso.	Twenty pesos.
Singkwenta pesos.	Fifty pesos.
Isang daang piso.	One hundred pesos.
Limampu't tatlong piso.	Fifty-three pesos.

Two quick notes. The currency word in Tagalog is piso (written “peso” in English and on the ₱ sign), so a single coin is isang piso. And round numbers take the -ng linker before piso — it is isang daang piso, never isang daan piso. To get fully comfortable with these amounts, work through our Tagalog numbers guide, which is the missing half of reading any price.

At the market vs. at the store

The social rules change with the venue. At the palengke (wet market) and with street vendors, haggling is expected — that is where tawad (“a discount”) comes in.

Tagalog	English
Ang mahal naman!	That's so expensive!
May tawad pa po?	Is there still a discount?
Dalawang daan na lang po.	Just two hundred, then.

The cultural rule: bargaining is a friendly social dance, not a fight. Smile, stay light, and if they say no, let it go. The opposite is true in malls, chain groceries, and fast food — prices there are fixed, and asking for tawad reads as odd. In those places you simply say Pabili po ng [item] and pay. If something looks like a steal, that is mura (“cheap”); if it stings, it is mahal (“expensive”).

You now have the whole arc: ask the price, pick the right question word, stay polite, understand the answer, and know when to haggle. Pack Magkano po ito? into your pocket, try it at the very next stall you pass, and watch how quickly a vendor’s smile tells you that you got it right.