How we work

Methodology

The price-level index

Our headline index puts the United States at 100. For each country we take two figures from World Bank Indicators API v2: GDP per capita at market exchange rates (nominal) and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP). Their ratio is the country's overall price level relative to the US dollar. Dividing by the US ratio and multiplying by 100 gives an index where lower means cheaper.

We currently cover 203 countries. All derived values — the index, rankings, and salary equivalences — are computed at build time. We never hand-enter a derived number.

Purchasing power & salary equivalence

To estimate the salary you'd need elsewhere to keep the same standard of living, we scale your income by the ratio of the two locations' price levels. It is a country-level estimate, not a city-specific quote — useful for orientation, not a relocation budget.

Quality of life

Cost is only half the question. We pair it with verified quality-of-life metrics from official sources: life expectancy and infant mortality (UN/WHO, via the World Bank), the intentional homicide rate (UNODC), internet use (ITU), safely-managed drinking water (WHO/UNICEF), and PM2.5 air quality (WHO).

Our quality-of-life score is a transparent, equal-weight composite (0–100) of five high-coverage metrics — life expectancy, internet use, homicide rate (inverted), infant mortality (inverted), and safe drinking water. Each is min–max normalized; we only score a country when at least four of the five are present. It is deliberately not a black-box "livability index" — every component, its direction, its year, and its source are shown on the country page so you can check our work.

The research gate

No figure ships without a primary, citable source. We use official and open datasets only — World Bank, OECD, Eurostat, national statistics offices. We deliberately do not use crowdsourced price aggregators, whose accuracy and commercial licensing don't meet our bar. Where data is missing, we show a gap rather than an estimate.

Updates

Core indicators refresh as the World Bank publishes new annual data. Each figure on the site carries its source year.