
Numbeo - comparison of cost of living around the world - BerislavLopac
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/
======
eksith
I appreciate the hard work that went into this, but we still have to be
careful as this is a very tricky measure.

E.G. Colombo, Sri Lanka :

[http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/city_result.jsp?country...](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/city_result.jsp?country=Sri+Lanka&city=Colombo)

"Colombo" is actually pretty big and diverse.

Depending on which area and even street you turn into, which collection of
shops you go to, the price will vary wildly. You can see this especially with
regard to Bread (66.14 - 165.00), Tomato (60.00 - 150.00) etc...

I'm sure this will be very helpful in areas where this is not the case, but I
don't think it's applicable where finer granularity is really needed. Good way
to gauge this is to see how wide the green bar is and how different the
prices. If you see a swath of wide green bars, then you know you need finer
granularity or the chart isn't applicable due to the volatility in price.

~~~
anovikov
This is the case almost everywhere (except places where some goods are
government regulated). In Russia shops with a price of bread (same or almost
same) from some like 70 cent to almost 10 dollars a loaf are commonplace
within walking distance from each other. They just serve different
demographics. And i think this is just fine and tells more good of Russian
economy than bad.

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caio1982
I'm traveling around the world (5 continents) for 1 year and I couldn't never
have done that properly without Numbeo's figures, really. Actually I'm
surprised it has been "discovered" only now. Most people miss the point here
as they tend to think of it as some "big data" or whatever, but it's right on
spot for daily expenses at least in the almost-100-cities list I'm visiting
(including my own, in Brazil). It's very useful to get an idea of what to
expect budget-wise when you have no idea whatsoever about costs in random
countries. But you have to use your brain as well and not trust the numbers
blindly :-)

~~~
caio1982
Btw, I'm in Nepal right now about to start trekking in the mountains, thanks
Holy Engineers for wifi in the Himalayas! You can google translate it if you
want: [http://alfanumerico.net](http://alfanumerico.net)

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jcrei
Isn't the data taken from expatistan.com ? Are they affiliated somehow?
Expatistan has been collecting data for a very long time now using
crowdsourcing with expats.

~~~
BerislavLopac
As far as I know, they have been around for a long time too, and have been
collecting their own data. I have never heard of Expatistan, thanks for the
tip!

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thenomad
It'd be nice if there was a way to sort by multiple categories.

For example, what's the best balance between low crime, high quality of
living, and cost of living?

The kind of filters you see on item databases for MMOs would be sensationally
useful here.

~~~
bane
You'd probably also want "available jobs in my industry" as a category. Low
crime, low cost of living etc. doesn't do you any good if you can't pay for
it.

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colmvp
Can someone explain to me what happened in Australia? They've had a notable
rising cost of living in the last few years.

~~~
WhaleBiologist
Mining boom. There are legions of cashed up FIFO (fly in - fly out) bogans
that have more money than sense, and so the price of everything has gone up.

~~~
vacri
Not just that - mining only accounts for 2% of our GDP. It's that our dollar
was worth 50-60 US cents, and so all of our prices normalised to that. Then it
strengthed quickly from the mining boom (somewhat abnormally) and achieved
parity with the greenback. Local prices did not fall, of course...

Apart from housing, which saw some years of 30-40% increase in the late
noughties, the cost of living hasn't risen much at all - inflation has been
reasonably low for a while.

The housing market commentary has been pretty funny. The years of 30% increase
had people going "this is pretty good". Now faced with a year of low single
digit deflation, the newspapers act like the sky is falling...

~~~
prawn
_Local prices did not fall, of course..._

I think one reason for this is that rent, especially in shopping centres
(malls), had kept pace and didn't drop away even though their tenants were
facing tougher competition from abroad. Another is that distributors were less
than keen to give up their slice. So, even when some retailers might've wanted
to drop prices to compete, they were facing pressure on the cost of floor
space as well as product.

~~~
jacques_chester
Neither of these arguments stack up. COGS went down went the dollar went up.
That meant gross profits went up. If rent stayed the same, retailers had more
flexibility to cut prices and they chose not to.

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eqdw
I used this site to gauge my future cost of living before moving to another
country. Once I moved I noticed it was off a bit, but didn't think much of it.

Then one day, while bragging about how cool this site was, I noticed that it
does other things (crime index, health care index, etc), and when I looked I
was shocked to see that it listed some very wonky crime stats. So I looked
over everything and realized that a) it's all based on voluntarily submitted
data, with no checks on anything; and b) the sample size was very very small.
No wonder people thought my Western Canadian town had more crime than the
Tenderloin, SF. The sample sizes (at the time) were 8 vs 6

Super awesome site but it needs 300x as much data before it'll be particularly
accurate

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fouc
My biggest problem with numbeo & expatistan is that they do not reflect the
true cost of living. They are heavily biased towards data from travellers &
expats. In particular these expats don't seem to speak the local language and
refuse to live like a local - they seem to insist on western values of living.

Example, [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/city_result.jsp?country...](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/city_result.jsp?country=Thailand&city=Bangkok)

Says "Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre" ranges from 15,000 to 25,000. I
had a fairly westernized place for 8,000 baht. If I had gone for a more thai
place, I could have had a place for between 3,000-5,000.

~~~
cantrevealname
> _heavily biased towards data from travellers & expats_

That's funny because I was about to say exactly the opposite -- that the data
is biased towards data from and for residents.

Using Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as examples, Numbeo's figures make them
seem quite inexpensive.

The problem is that as a tourist or as a business visitor, you are paying
hotel prices, not rent. Hotels in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are
surprisingly expensive (approaching New York City prices).

For reasons I can't understand, the ratio of hotel room price to annual rental
price of an unfurnished apartment in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is much
worse than in other cities around the world I'm familiar with. Renting a
furnished flat on a monthly basis is also very expensive.

This distorts the picture hugely. As a tourist or business visitor, Sao Paulo
and Rio de Janeiro end up being very expensive cities to visit, whereas as a
resident, it wouldn't be so bad.

~~~
fouc
I see what you mean, actually in my experience even supposedly cheap countries
turn out to be expensive, there isn't really many truly cheap places, and
hotels tend to be surprisingly expensive, especially the ones that cater to
westerners, that are found easily online (i.e. in english).

By the way, when I think of "Cost Of Living" I am thinking of long-term stay
of 6+ months, especially since many landlords insist on 6-12+ months leases.

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contingencies
The best feature is being able to compare two cities. They also have a
national average feature. Unfortunately it seems you can't compare a national
average to a city. See also: [http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-
life/country_result.jsp?cou...](http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-
life/country_result.jsp?country=New+Zealand)

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danielsiders
I'd love to see this data combined with
[http://mikemcbrearty.com/climate/](http://mikemcbrearty.com/climate/) so you
could query: somewhere with the same climate, but cheaper

~~~
anovikov
...and you end up in a total hole. Picking a place to live doesn't work that
way. You want a place with nice interesting people, and these tend to be rich,
and... oops you find yourself in a very expensive place. I have yet to see a
place good for living which isn't reddish on numbeo map.

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akos
+1 for not using Google Maps.

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brianbreslin
Slightly off topic: I would like to know where it's still cheap to buy a beach
front house that is accessible from the United States? Is anyone doing global
real estate pricing?

~~~
arethuza
That's quite an interesting search problem - I guess it depends on what you
mean by "accessible from the United States" and the implicit requirement to be
able to do something on the beach without hypothermia?

~~~
GFischer
Owning a beachfront property in some countries might be easy, but there are
some tricky logistics involved:

For example, there are some very cheap places in my country, Uruguay, and in
neighbouring Brazil, but, are you going to pay for a housekeeper?. If you
don't visit often, you're likely to find either a dismantled house or an
illegal tenant.

Also, people from out of country might not know the local taxes or
regulations, and you could have your house seized due to ignorance.

I think that renting is a much better solution, unless you expect to spend a
significant amount of time in your beach house :)

BTW, The housekeeper is probably going to be more expensive than the house.
Maintenance is often as expensive as the house too.

On the plus side, beach houses can be rented :) to get some expenses back.

~~~
brianbreslin
What's a good place to search for rentals. I hear punta del este is nice in
December ;-)

~~~
GFischer
Hmm: locals usually check
[http://www.gallito.com.uy/](http://www.gallito.com.uy/) , and Argentineans
their local equivalents.

Many go for a weekend a month in advance, and look at the "For Rent" signs,
then make a deal with the homeowner (usually haggling on price). That is of
course not very practical for someone from the U.S. !!

Punta del Este is nice (though some people like other kinds of vacations, like
Punta del Diablo), but it's very expensive (even for people from the U.S.),
especially in January. December is a little cheaper.

The times I've been there I went to a hostel. My parents use the "haggling"
option, so I don't have a good recommendation for online search. Airbnb is
slightly more expensive than the average listing, but not by much.

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korussian
Actually, the prices are right on target for Seoul, South Korea.

Unlike most websites of this sort, I'm surprised to find the information
accurate.

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edem
Please put the currency on the charts! I have no idea what do those numbers
mean!

~~~
BerislavLopac
[http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/cpi_explained.jsp](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/cpi_explained.jsp)

------
chatman
This has been there for a long time. Has there been any change recently?

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HipstaJules
I really like it, it is very useful and accurate

~~~
alaaibrahim
Well, I don't think so, since I lived in multiple cities, the order is totally
messed up.

Also for e.g. in Amman, public transportation, might cost 0.40 JD, but they
don't get anywhere, and in most of times, walking is much faster that taking
the bus.

Also there is no such thing as unlimited data plans there too.

So at least for the middle east, I don't think it's accurate.

~~~
Aqua_Geek
It doesn't seem very accurate in Munich, either, particularly WRT housing —
all the 1BR flats we saw were north of 1,200€/mo.

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jerogarcia
the numbers for my country (argentina) are at least 7 years outdated.

