Methodology & sources
Every city page is designed as a relocation dossier: personalized costs, citeable baskets, legal path context, and liveability signals. Data vintage for structured claims: August 2026.
What we optimize for
Visitors should leave knowing whether they can afford a city on their income, whether a visa path is plausible, and how liveability compares — with enough source transparency to trust the numbers. That same structure supports classic SEO and generative search citation: clear claims, dated figures, and primary references.
Cost baskets
Each city has a monthly basket (housing, utilities, groceries, transport, healthcare, internet, dining, entertainment, childcare) expressed as low / typical / high USD ranges. Typical values feed the calculator. Ranges reflect neighborhood and lifestyle variance, not a single listing.
All city and country dossier data is managed in Prismic (verdicts, baskets, sources, liveability, visa pathways, housing ranges, move-in costs, country decision hub copy). Editors update documents in the CMS; the site reads published fields at request time. If a group is empty on a document, the app may show a temporary derived baseline until editors fill Prismic — then CMS values always win.
Primary reference sources
- OECD Purchasing Power Parities — cross-country price levels
- World Bank International Comparison Program — global PPP benchmarks
- National statistical offices — CPI and housing indices
- Official immigration portals — visa thresholds and processing
- National tax authorities / OECD tax publications — rate context
- WHO Global Health Observatory — healthcare system context
- Travel advisories and official crime publications — safety
- WMO World Weather — climate normals
Scoring model
Cities receive 0–100 scores for affordability, tax ease, visa ease, safety, and employment. Overall score weights: affordability 30%, employment 25%, tax 15%, visa 15%, safety 15%.
CheckCostOfLiving Moving Readiness Index
A proprietary relocator index published at /research/moving-index. Weights:
- Affordability: 28%
- Visa accessibility: 22%
- Safety: 18%
- Employment: 17%
- Tax burden (higher = easier): 15%
Quarterly editorial review with dated source footnotes on city pages.
Calculator math
Housing type and lifestyle multipliers adjust basket lines. Childcare scales with children; groceries scale mildly with adults. Estimated income tax uses the city effective rate; social contributions use a transparent proxy for net-pay framing. Visa eligibility compares gross income to the published minimum for the primary route.
Limits
Not financial, tax, or immigration advice. Neighborhood prices, exchange rates, and policy change. Always verify with official sources and local listings before relocating. We do not store calculator inputs.