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Cost of Living

If you are thinking of moving somewhere the links above can give you a starting point. Like anything if the data is bad the analysis will be inaccurate. In the end, you will need to find out for yourself.

My recommendation would be to pick a few places that you have been to and would like to live or think you would like. Then start going through the data.

I know some will just look for certain budgets and pick from those places. But that doesn’t seem like the ideal way.

I have heard stories of people picking places to live without ever actually visiting! Which makes no sense to me. Please visit before you decide to permanently move there.

So Numbeo is considered the gold standard. It has been around the longest. Keep in mind that if you are looking for data in less popular places the data may be very old. If you want to know how data is handled go to this link. https://www.numbeo.com/common/motivation_and_methodology.jsp

Personally, I love The Earth Awaits. Because of how easy it is to use and visually it is more attractive than Numbeo. Users are able to adjust their search requirements. You can export the data. You can adjust for lifestyle, etc. I just enjoy messing around with it. 

Expatistan DOES NOT use Numbeo data. I have not used it as much so I cannot comment. But I think this is a good to have different sources of info. If you click around, you can click on an item like tomatoes. It will then show you how many data points there are and when was the last time someone contributed info. I couldn’t figure out how to get access to the data points. I imagine it is a paid service.

Livingcost collects it data as follows ‘The data is partly crowdsourced by users plus aggregated from public sources:rental webistes, chain grocery stores, etc.” If you go this link and scroll down you can get more info on the data it uses. https://livingcost.org/press. It visually looks nice.

Nomadlist seems to have a mixed reputation based on the reviews. However, I do like the appearance and it breaks down costs between living like an expat vs local. Shows rents for an apartment vs airbnb and even includes average hotel costs. I don’t subscribe to the paid service, so for me it is fine website for initial data collecting.  https://www.producthunt.com/products/nomad-list/reviews

Like I said earlier. These sites are dependent on good data. And I know personally some of the data presented is wrong based on my travels. Does that mean you should not use these sites? No, I am not saying that. I am just saying use the sites to help you with some planning. But only accurate info will either to ask people who are actually there (on Reddit/FB or friends/relatives) or visit yourself.