Cost of living index by country 2026: where your money goes the furthest

Country-level cost of living indices are one of the most searched expat topics, and most of them run on crowdsourced data with no visible method. We built ours differently: average the monthly budget across every city we cover in each country, using only government statistics for prices and tax rates.

The index is a relative scale. The cheapest country in our data gets a score of 100. Everything else is scored against it. A score of 200 means average living costs are twice as high as the cheapest country. That makes it fast to scan.

Country averages hide a lot, though. Germany stretches from affordable Hamburg to expensive Munich, and the index mashes both into one number. It is useful for the general price level. The city and neighborhood calculators are where the real planning happens.

What the 2026 data shows: Southern European countries keep offering the best value-for-money in the EU. Northern European countries rank higher on the index, but median salaries are higher too. The UK lands in the middle, with London pulling the average up.