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Cost of Living Index by Country 2024 – Numbeo
- aster0id 2y agoIMO depending on what question you're looking to answer using this page, typically some variant of "how expensive is my country relative to others", it would probably be useful to check out the purchasing power adjusted index (also present on the page)
- 55555 2y agoJapan offers insane value right now for anyone who wants to spend some months abroad.
- voisin 2y agoWhy is that? What’s been happening on the ground?
- ChumpGPT 2y agoJapan has always been a value. I don't understand why folks think it is expensive. Food is cheap, accommodations aren't expensive, transportation is affordable. The most expensive thing is airfare from the USA. I believe that they never fully recovered after Covid and tourism never bounced back. The YEN has also taken a beating so you can get more for your USD.
- jbm 2y agoJapan was seen as expensive when I first moved there; my rent there was certainly higher than it would have been in Canada at the time (Circa 2008). Also, it's hard to directly compare stuff on shelves to what we have here. For example, Japanese peaches are much more expensive than Ontario peaches - but they are also incomparably better. However, if you only look at the price on the label, you would be rightfully shocked at the price difference.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoJapan is mostly cheap, but on our trip my wife accidentally bought some grapes at a normal grocery store (she wasn’t converting prices in her head). I think it was $20 for a pound.
- ammo1662 2y agoYou should carefully check the price tag when you want to bug fruits and vegetables in Japan, especially those are produced in Japan. The Japan Agricultural Cooperation has a very long history in controlling the price of the local products. The imports usually cost less than domestically grown equivalents.
- jbm 2y agoAh, my in-laws are in Yamanashi and I will never forget when they took me to the vineyard and I was randomly shocked to find out how much the grapes cost.. (They are very good though)
- eru 2y ago> Japan has always been a value. How long back does your 'always' go? Japan has approximately the same local price level now that they had in the early 1990s. One USD also buys approximately the same number of Yen as it did in the early 1990s. But the USD had quite a lot inflation in the meantime. Ie Japan has gotten a lot cheaper comparatively. It used to be a lot more expensive.
- Loocid 2y ago>I believe that they never fully recovered after Covid and tourism never bounced back. Tourism bounced back as soon as they opened the borders. The 2023 numbers were at 2016/2017 level despite them not opening their borders until late 2022 (meaning lower ski-season numbers), and removing covid checks in April 2023. Feb 2024 was reported as having 7% more tourists than Feb 2019 (2019 having peak tourism numbers). There are a LOT of tourists at the moment.
- tim333 2y agoWhen I went there, 1983, it was one of the most expensive places on the planet.
- wenc 2y ago1 USD = 156 JPY For years it has been 1 USD = 110 JPY. Japan is also overrun by tourists right now.
- ChumpGPT 2y agoChinese?
- culopatin 2y agoExchange rate doesn’t mean anything if the prices adjust for it. Have they not had any price changes following the devaluation of their currency?
- haiku2077 2y agoAnecdotally I was in country not too long ago and the exchange rate meant fantastic dining was around the same cost as some fast food in the US.
- culopatin 2y agoThat’s not the exchange rate, but the relative prices. Exchange rate in Argentina right now is 1000 pesos to 1 usd. In 2021 it was between 200-300 or so to 1, and it’s almost twice as expensive today as it was in 2021.
- ChumpGPT 2y agoEastern Europe is where it is at. Ukraine is super cheap and a really beautiful place, requires a little work to get there but not to bad. Hotels are cheap and really good food and just awesome. Planning to go again this summer.
- ck_one 2y agoWould avoid the eastern part though
- ChumpGPT 2y agoYeah, not everyone has what it takes for a good adventure....I suppose that's why so many like Paris and Rome, it's all they can handle...
- futureshock 2y agoCurious to hear your story. Why take the risk of going to Ukraine? How long did you go for? How much did the war impact your visit?
- ChumpGPT 2y agoGetting there wasn't too difficult, there is an overnight train from Prague that takes you to the border where you switch trains to go to Lviv or onward. You can also take a train from anywhere in Poland to the border. Buses are a good option too. Prices were very affordable, $250 for an entire month at an AirBnB in the heart of Old Town Lviv. Had Internet, washing machine, stove, etc, nice place. Then went on to Kyiv for a few weeks, absolutely amazing. My new favorite city in Europe. That was $28 a night at Hotel Ukraine. Everything was affordable and they accept credit cards/mobile payments etc everywhere. Got a sim from Kyiv Star Mobile for like $4 USD with 20 gig data and it worked everywhere, even in Germany, Poland and Czech Republic. There were air raid alerts when I was there and missile/rocket attacks but they do a good job protecting everyone. All in all it was a awesome time, am definitely going back this summer. It's a wonderful and very resilient country with beautiful people, once you visit you understand why they are fighting so hard to preserve it. The war has cost them dearly and it is sobering to see all the memorials dedicated to their dead Heroes. I am glad to have gone and spend time and money there to support them. Everyone I met was incredibly grateful that I had come as a visitor, it's important to show that they are not alone. It felt like I was part of an incredibly important moment in History in their fight for survival. I encourage everyone to go and support them and their economy in some way.
- jbm 2y agoThis anecdotally back ups what I was seeing when I visited the US. Groceries and food (in general) was surprisingly more expensive in New Hampshire and Vermont than Calgary where I live (which is not a low COL area in Canada). I cannot understand how American fruit costs more in the US than they did back home (when including the exchange rate). I was not visiting a premium grocery store (it was a Price Chopper near a Tesla Charger near a small town in NH.) This generally surprised me because the Canadian "online left" is organizing protests about the cost of food, while I don't see anything similar in the US.
- pstrateman 2y agoSalaries in the US are substantially higher then Canada. Switch to the purchasing power index to get a more clear view of the relative wealth of people in the countries.
- jltsiren 2y agoPurchasing power can be misleading in countries with a top-heavy income distribution. Because cost of living calculations include everyday expenses but exclude most luxuries, average costs are close to what the typical consumer pays. But if the income distribution is skewed enough, average salaries can be much higher than what the typical consumer earns.
- eru 2y agoYou can look at median salaries for that.
- teo_zero 2y agoWhile you're right that median is more useful than mean in this case, it doesn't address the specific issue jltsiren raised, that this kind of statistics tends to exclude luxury goods. This seems reasonable, as luxury is not related to the cost of 'living'. However doing so they include more-than-necessary-to-live earnings but excludes more-than-necessary-to-live costs. In other words, if you include Bruce Wayne's income, you should include batmobiles, too!
- glial 2y agoThe relative ranking of the US has changed drastically within the past decade. I wonder why. It seems like many factors that we blame for rising costs - inflation, supply-chain issues - would affect other countries as well.
- eru 2y agoWhy would American inflation affect countries that don't use the USD?
- glial 2y agoThe US is not the only country who has experienced high inflation since COVID.
- tempsy 2y agoFrom my experience it's become relatively more expensive than other countries even if every country has experienced inflation to a small or large extent. The joke used to be how expensive Switzerland was...now I am looking at prices in Zurich for food, drinks, hotels and it's no different than what you'd pay in a big city in the US, maybe less.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoIn 2007 before I left Lausanne, a Big Mac meal, was 10.5 CHF, that was maybe $8, this was before CHF hit parity with USD. Now it is 16 CHF, and CHF is now 10% more dear than USD, so I would say it has risen quite a bit? Even if not as much as a Big Mac meal did in the states (from I think $5 to $13). A better indicator would be Kebob prices, but I just don’t remember those.
- tempsy 2y agomy point wasn't that a Big Mac meal in Switzerland hasn't risen since 2007 or wahtever. My point was at that time an American in Switzerland would have thought it was relatively much more expensive than a Big Mac meal here. Now it's similar.
- standardUser 2y agoWhen sorting by Rent Index, the US looks like a massive outlier at 45. Everywhere else over 40 is either a tiny island nation/territory or famously idiosyncratic (Switzerland, Iceland, UAE). The other Anglosphere giants, Canada and Australia, come in very high as well at 36. I would have expected the most desirable Western European nations to lead, but most of those are in the 20's. Those nations tend to have more regulation and much less space to develop, yet they've managed to keep their rents meaningfully lower despite having a comparable cost of living overall. > Rent Index: This index estimates the prices of renting apartments in a city compared to New York City. If the Rent Index is 80, it suggests that the average rental prices in that city are approximately 20% lower than those in New York City.
- throwaway22032 2y agoCanada, Australia and the US make up the top three countries for average home size by square footage. If people prioritise the size of their home more then it stands to reason that they'll pay more as a percentage of income.
- standardUser 2y agoGreat point. Considering square footage, New Zealand looks like the outlier. Same average home size as the US but with a Rent Index of 29.
- harry_ord 2y agoI think just by country messes up some of the measures for some countries and cities. I paid half of £720 to rent a former family home in Nottingham while a friend paid over £1000 in Nottingham. Not my experience but I think Amsterdam also has extremely high rents but I'm not sure how it compares to the rest of the Netherlands.
- em500 2y agoThe Netherlands has a segmented rental market. The social/rent controlled sector has a price ceiling of €880/month and is only accessible with annual income below €48k/€53k (single/multi-person household). These norms apply nation wide, but as demand / free market prices in the large cities like Amsterdam is much higher than elsewhere in the country, waiting times for social rent there is around 15 years (vs maybe 3 to 5 outside the big cities). Free market rents (anything over €880/month) in Amsterdam is probably around €1500 for a 1br or €2500-€3500 for a 3br. Around 3/4 of the total rental housing stock is social/rent-controlled units. It can be pretty nice if you manage to get one, but it's almost inaccessible to newcomers/outsiders due to the income caps and waiting times. Which is pretty much the expected outcome for price control affordability policies.
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- AliveShine 2y agoAustralia should be #1. it is bonkers here right now. US is expensive than AU? hell no.
- tempsy 2y agouh what? what's your evidence Australia is more expensive than the US, especially large metros like LA/SF/NYC/Miami?
- tmnvix 2y agoI wouldn't put too much stock in this measure. For NZ I checked the score for 2014(104) vs 2024(68). That just does not seem right.
- prawn 2y agoI'm from Australia and spent five weeks travelling in the US earlier this year. It felt more expensive than any previous trip, and also relative to Australia. We had grocery runs where I walked away wondering how a significant portion of the population there could afford to eat decent food. Tipping is always rising as well, so to eat out you're then paying a larger premium on an already higher number. One example I can remember, comparing a pretty default Thai place in the US to one of the more premium Thai restaurants here in Adelaide: AU: Pad Thai chicken AU$23, Kao Pad chicken AU$19. US: Pad Thai chicken + tax and tip AU$32, house fried rice AU$32. Yes, there's cheaper and more expensive, but that was a 'special occasion' restaurant versus a place we just stopped in adjacent a Walmart carpark.
- democracy 2y agoMy experience last year was the USA felt more expensive, starting with the basics like the cheapest t-shirts from Wallmart (vs kmart), beers from a local bottleshop (I was always told AU got the highest alcohol tax so I was a bit surprised) and food places with tax+tips felt more expensive as well.
- culopatin 2y agoThe index is compared against NYC. So Australia as a whole must be cheaper.
- PaywallBuster 2y agoThey should publish their own inflation index and compare it with the "official" numbers published by the governemnt
- baron816 2y agoWhat people always get wrong about inflation statistics is that they’re really only meaningful when talking about the whole country. If you think CPI is wrong, well, it’s wrong for you. It’s wrong for every individual. But it’s right when you average everyone out. For example, let’s say you have a fixed rate mortgage on the home you own and live in. If house prices skyrocket because supply is restricted, that inflation doesn’t affect you. Or let’s say you spend $200 per month on food out of a total budget of $4000. If food prices go up uniformly 20%, but nothing else changes for all the other stuff you buy (ie, you’re paying $40 more per month than you were before), you’re effective inflation rate is 1%.
- OutOfHere 2y agoIndia offers remarkable value in all listed indexes except the Local Purchasing Power Index.
- rishav_sharan 2y agoits QoL index is also remarkably low
- lsc4719 2y agoWhat's the multiplier for index to convert to dollar?
- rishav_sharan 2y agohas anyone done a simple merging of the Cost of living and quality of living to get the top 10 countries with the lowest cost of living but relatively highest quality of living?
- kazanz 2y agoDo it and share!
- em500 2y agoNumbeo already includes (among other factors) CoL in their QoL index calculation, see: qhttps://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp You can of course use alternative calculations / weights, but without a principled way to do so, you can choose weights to come up with pretty much any outcome that you like.
- stephenr 2y agoAlso worth mentioning that the QoL index considers "climate index" which is almost meaningless, and apparently doesn't account for factors like "suffers from tropical cyclones".
- phtrivier 2y agoLiving in France, i'm pretty surprised they manage to find a "cost of living index" being _lower_ now than in 2018. Sure, things have recessed from the highs of 2022 / 2023, but the idea of a "groceries index" that does not reflect how is has changed to, ahem, shop for groceries is weird.
- specproc 2y agoIt's baselined against New York, so you can be more expensive, but not have had the cost of living grow faster than NYC. This makes it alright for comparing between countries in a single year, but I'm not sure exactly what you get out of comparing the same country within a year.
- stephenr 2y agoWhere's the "quality of life" or "corruption level" index on that table? Heck, what about measurable things like "average air quality".
- evnix 2y agoI wish they did a ratio on quality of life over cost of life. They seem to have both data sets there
- rldjbpin 2y agobeing from a country on the bottom side of the list living on one from the top, it seems to roughly add up from my experience. although it is more accurate for the more expensive parts of each country. when living in a cheaper country to live compared to a more expensive one, there is a very different split between rent and other expense in terms of having a comparable standard of living.