💸 Cost of Living Explorer
Where does your money actually go further?
One question, answered in USD: what does a month of your life cost in each of 163 cities? Monthly budgets, rent, food, utilities and salaries with live exchange rates — filter by region and budget, sort any column, and open a city for a full breakdown, climate heatmap and map. Each city links to its own detailed profile page.
Data last updated · Source: Numbeo
How this dashboard works
Every figure starts as a local-currency price from Numbeo, the world's largest crowd-sourced cost-of-living database, collected through its regional price tables and refreshed periodically. Prices are converted to US dollars in your browser using live exchange rates, so a falling peso or strengthening dollar shows up in the numbers immediately — you can even edit the rates in the sidebar to model a scenario.
The headline "Individual/mo" budget covers one person's everyday spending — food, transport, utilities, entertainment — excluding rent, which is broken out separately because it varies more between neighborhoods than any other cost. "Individual all-in" adds a one-bedroom city-center apartment on top, which is the closest single number to "what would a month of my life cost here."
Cities marked ≈ est. have some estimated figures where Numbeo coverage is thin; everything else is drawn from reported prices. Each city links to a full profile page with a complete cost breakdown, an hourly climate heatmap, and a map.
What does the CoL Index mean?
It compares everyday expenses (excluding rent) to New York City, which is set to 100. A city scoring 40 means day-to-day life costs roughly 40% of what it does in NYC. Rent is tracked as a separate index because it varies far more than groceries or transport.
Does the monthly budget include rent?
The "Individual/mo" and "Family of 4/mo" figures exclude rent, following Numbeo's convention. Use "Individual all-in", which adds a one-bedroom city-center apartment, for a realistic total monthly cost for one person.
How accurate are these numbers?
They are crowd-sourced averages — good for comparing cities, not for quoting your exact future budget. Your lifestyle can move the real number 30% in either direction. Cities marked "≈ est." have partially estimated figures where reported data is thin.
How current are the exchange rates?
Live rates are fetched every time the page loads, from open exchange-rate APIs. If the fetch fails you'll see baseline rates with a warning. You can also type your own rate into the sidebar to test a what-if scenario.
What is the cheapest city for digital nomads?
By individual monthly cost, the cheapest cities in this dataset are typically in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Andes — places like Pokhara, Kathmandu and La Paz run under $600/month excluding rent. Sort the table by "Individual cost" to see the current ranking with live exchange rates applied.