Methodology

Sources

World Bank — International Comparison Program. PPP conversion factor for household final consumption, and the official market exchange rate. CC BY 4.0. This is the global spine — 204 countries.

Eurostat — purchasing power parities (prc_ppp_ind). Price level indices by consumption category, published on an EU27=100 basis and rebased here to US=100. CC BY 4.0. This is the category detail, and it covers Europe plus a handful of others.

Not used, at all: crowdsourced prices. Numbeo, Expatistan and similar sites are built from user submissions that nobody verifies. They are the reason this site exists; borrowing from them to fill a gap would throw away the only thing this site has that they do not.

How the price level is worked out

1. The World Bank publishes a purchasing power parity for household consumption — how much local currency buys the same basket as one US dollar — and the official market exchange rate for the same year.
2. The price level is simply PPP ÷ exchange rate × 100. If a basket needs 1.50 New Zealand dollars per US dollar of purchasing power but the market hands you 1.65 New Zealand dollars for that dollar, New Zealand's prices sit at 1.50 ÷ 1.65 = 91% of the US level.
3. Nothing is modelled, smoothed or estimated. You can reproduce every number on this site from two public figures.
4. Where Eurostat also publishes a price level for the same country and year, the two are compared and the gap is printed — including when they disagree.

Full methodology →

The cross-check

Where both agencies publish a household-consumption price level for the same country and year, the two are compared. Of 39 such countries, 37 agree within 5 points (94.9%). Where they do not, the country's page says so plainly instead of quietly picking the nicer number.

Getting this comparison right took care: the World Bank's figure is household final consumption, and Eurostat publishes both that and actual individual consumption, which folds in government-funded health and education that households never pay for at the till. Comparing the two different baskets made agreement look far worse than it is. Both sides of the check now use household final consumption, for the same year.

Three things this cannot tell you

• A price. Everything here is an index with the United States at 100. This site does not know what a litre of milk costs anywhere and will not pretend to.
• A city. The statistics are national. Capitals are typically dearer than their national average, sometimes far dearer, and no amount of arithmetic on a national figure produces a city one.
• Your budget. Housing dominates most people's costs and varies enormously within a country. A national index is a starting point for a comparison, not a forecast of your spending.

SOURCE·World Bank — International Comparison Program·PPP conversion factor for household final consumption, and the official market exchange rate. CC BY 4.0.·REVIEWED AUG 2026

SOURCE·Eurostat — purchasing power parities (prc_ppp_ind)·Price level indices by consumption category, published on an EU27=100 basis and rebased here to US=100. CC BY 4.0.·REVIEWED AUG 2026

SOURCE·World Bank ICP PPPs + Eurostat price level indices·price levels derived as PPP ÷ exchange rate, see method·REVIEWED AUG 2026