🌐 Global·Cost of living·NYC = 100
How expensive is your country compared to the rest of the world?
Pick your country. See where its basket sits against New York, how it ranks against 24 others, and whether local incomes keep up.
I live in , where the cost basket runs at 131.5 of New York's.
Switzerland · cost basket · New York = 100
131.5
Ranked #1 of 25 · +31.5% vs New York
Where Switzerland sits on the scale
The anchors of the basket.
The most expensive country in this set runs at roughly 5.9× the least expensive — on the same headline basket of housing, groceries, transport and services. New York sits at 100 by convention; everything else stretches above or below it.
Most expensive
🇨🇭Switzerland
131.5
Your country
🇨🇭Switzerland
131.5
Least expensive
🇵🇰Pakistan
22.3
The full ranking
Twenty-five countries, sorted by cost basket.
Each bar is the country's headline cost-of-living index against New York at 100. Your country is highlighted; continent colours tint the rest so you can scan regions at a glance. The +/− chip shows how the basket compares to New York directly.
01
🇨🇭
Switzerland
131.5
+31.5%
02
🇺🇸
United States
100.0
+0.0%
03
🇦🇺
Australia
92.4
-7.6%
04
🇬🇧
United Kingdom
90.2
-9.8%
05
🇨🇦
Canada
86.5
-13.5%
06
🇯🇵
Japan
86.1
-13.9%
07
🇰🇷
South Korea
82.3
-17.7%
08
🇫🇷
France
75.5
-24.5%
09
🇩🇪
Germany
71.0
-29.0%
10
🇮🇹
Italy
68.4
-31.6%
11
🇪🇸
Spain
60.5
-39.5%
12
🇵🇱
Poland
43.8
-56.2%
13
🇨🇳
China
42.5
-57.5%
14
🇧🇷
Brazil
40.2
-59.8%
15
🇹🇭
Thailand
39.4
-60.6%
16
🇲🇽
Mexico
38.5
-61.5%
17
🇿🇦
South Africa
37.8
-62.2%
18
🇵🇭
Philippines
33.9
-66.1%
19
🇹🇷
Turkey
33.7
-66.3%
20
🇮🇩
Indonesia
32.6
-67.4%
21
🇻🇳
Vietnam
30.8
-69.2%
22
🇳🇬
Nigeria
28.6
-71.4%
23
🇮🇳
India
25.1
-74.9%
24
🇪🇬
Egypt
24.8
-75.2%
25
🇵🇰
Pakistan
22.3
-77.7%
EuropeNorth AmericaSouth AmericaAsiaAfricaOceania
Cost meets wages
Does your country's income keep up with its prices?
Each dot is a country. The horizontal axis is the cost-of-living index; the vertical axis is the median PPP income. The quadrants name themselves: top-left is the affordable-and-rich corner — where local wages outpace local prices the most. Bottom-right is the squeeze.
EuropeNorth AmericaSouth AmericaAsiaAfricaOceania
Three countries worth the asterisk
What the cost basket alone can't tell you.
Best ratio
United States gives back the most per cost dollar.
Median income of $46,000 PPP against a cost-of-living index of 100.0. On the income-to-cost ratio (460), United States is the best in this set — every PPP dollar buys more of an above-median life there than anywhere else.
The squeeze
Nigeria pays the most for the least.
Median income of $1,400 PPP against a cost-of-living index of 28.6. Local prices outpace local wages worse than anywhere else in this set; the same income buys roughly half the life it would in the best-ratio country.
The cost spread
Switzerland is 5.9× more expensive than Pakistan.
Switzerland runs at 131.5 of the New York basket; Pakistan at 22.3. A 5.9-fold gap on the same headline basket, before any conversion for what your wages actually buy on the ground.
Compare on income instead?
Same 25 countries, but ranked by what households earn and where you personally land on the global income curve. The companion question to this page.
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Next steps
Four calculators sized to the same question.
City costs side-by-side
43 cities ranked on the same basket. The granular companion to this country-level view.
Open→
Take-home, country by country
Tax and social charges vary more than rent. A real after-tax number for any country in the set.
Calculate→
Am I saving enough?
How your savings rate stacks up against national averages across 25 countries. One number, a lot of context.
Check→
Wages vs purchasing power
What is a $80,000 offer in San Francisco worth in Lisbon, Tokyo or Mumbai? Same dollars, very different lives.
Run it→
Frequently asked
A headline basket of housing, groceries, transport, and services, anchored to New York = 100. A country at 50 has roughly half the consumer-price level of New York for that basket; at 130, roughly thirty percent above. The index does not include income tax, which varies more across countries than the basket itself.
Three reasons stack: a strong currency (the Swiss franc has appreciated steadily for two decades), a tight housing market driven by zoning and immigration, and high-wage domestic services that flow into restaurant, transport, and personal-care prices. The flip side is that Swiss median income is also the highest in the set.
By convention, the index is built so that New York = 100. The US national average is close to but slightly below the New York level; the dataset uses the US figure directly as the country-level baseline. Any country with a value above 100 is more expensive than the US on this basket; below 100, cheaper.
Yes, weighted at roughly 30–35% of the basket — the largest single component. Excluding rent narrows the gap between the most and least expensive countries by about 40%; including it widens it. Most of the variation across rich countries comes from housing.
The cost-of-living indices are derived from PPP factors and consumer-price surveys; they are accurate to within ±5–10% at the national level. They smooth over enormous within-country variation: a Manhattan basket is roughly twice a Mississippi basket, and a Zurich basket is roughly 25% above a Bern basket. Use them for relative ranking, not absolute budgeting.
No. It means the headline basket is cheap, which is necessary but not sufficient. Cross-reference cost with median income (the scatter on this page) to see whether local wages keep up. The countries in the top-left quadrant (affordable plus high income) are the genuine bargains; the bottom-right (expensive plus low income) is the squeeze.