Cost of Living Comparison Calculator

How Cost of Living Comparisons Work

Cost of living comparisons measure how much purchasing power a given income provides in different cities or countries. A $70,000 salary means very different things in San Francisco versus Memphis.

Cost of Living Index (CLI):

Most indices set a reference city to 100. A city with an index of 130 is 30% more expensive; one with 70 is 30% cheaper.

Equivalent salary formula:

Equivalent Salary = Current Salary × (Target City Index ÷ Current City Index)

Worked example:

You earn $85,000 in Austin, TX (index: 92). Moving to Seattle, WA (index: 118).

Equivalent Salary = $85,000 × (118 ÷ 92) = $85,000 × 1.283 = $109,022

You would need about $109,000 in Seattle to maintain the same standard of living. Enter 92 and 118 in the two optional exact-index fields and the calculator returns that figure.

Tiers versus published indices

The two dropdowns offer six broad tiers, and they are deliberately coarse. Use them when you want a rough answer fast. But a tier is a wide band: Seattle sits in Tier 2 along with Boston and Los Angeles, and depending on which publisher you consult its index lands anywhere between about 115 and 155. That spread is the difference between a comfortable move and a bad one, which is why the exact fields exist and why the example above uses them.

Numbeo, C2ER and Payscale all publish city indices on a 100 = national average scale. Take both numbers from the same publisher. Their methodologies weight housing differently, so a Numbeo figure divided by a C2ER figure is not a meaningful ratio.

Major cost components and typical weights:

International comparisons (USD equivalents for $50,000 US income):

• London: need ~$65,000
• Zurich: need ~$70,000
• Mexico City: $25,000 equivalent
• Chiang Mai, Thailand: $15,000–20,000 equivalent

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP):

PPP adjusts for what money actually buys locally, not just exchange rates. The Economist’s Big Mac Index is the famous simplified version: it compares the price of one identical product across countries, which is enough to show where a currency is over- or under-valued.

Tax is the thing this calculation cannot see. Comparing two US cities, the index says nothing about state and local income tax, and that gap can be larger than the cost-of-living difference itself. Texas, Florida, Washington and Nevada levy no state income tax; California tops out above 13%. Comparing across countries the effect is bigger again. Work out the after-tax figure in both places before you decide.

Everything on this page is a ratio, so the currency does not matter to the arithmetic. Enter your salary in whatever you are paid in and the answer comes back in the same units. What the page does not do is convert between currencies, so an international comparison needs an exchange rate applied separately.