Nine cost of living calculators, one question: what does a $150,000 New Yorker need in Berlin? The answers ran from $68,200 to $116,100

By Skyler Bissell · September 20, 2026 · 12 min read

On 20 September 2026 I gave nine cost of living calculators the same job: a single person earning $150,000 in New York City is moving to Berlin, what do they need there? Five of the nine could take the pair. Their readings, turned into a salary by the arithmetic each tool invites, ranged from $68,200 to $116,100, a spread of $47,900 on one question. The other four are built for moves inside the United States and could not begin. Below is what each tool printed, what its figure includes, where it says its data comes from, and a ranking on six tests I state before applying them.

A cost of living calculator is a tool that compares what a fixed basket of goods and services costs in two places and reports the difference as a ratio, a monthly budget or a salary. The first two answer how much cheaper one city's shops are; only the third answers what you need to earn, and for a move between countries none of the nine tested here produces it.

One rule about the ranking. cityparity runs a calculator too, and it is not in the list. It appears once, in the method section at the end, as the reference figure the nine are held against, with the same caveat the nine get. A directory of Numbeo alternatives sorted by the job each does is at sites like Numbeo; this page runs a test.

Nine calculators, one pair: what each one printed

Every figure in the table is the tool's own output on the test date, or a dated archive capture where the live page refuses automated retrieval. Where a tool gives only a percentage, the salary column is our arithmetic, $150,000 times the tool's ratio, and it is labelled as ours because the tool never made that claim.

Every cell is the tool's own output or its own words on 20 September 2026, except Expatistan, which is the Internet Archive's capture of 8 July 2025 because the live site returns 403 to automated requests and has no 2026 capture of this comparison. The salary column is our multiplication of $150,000 by the tool's stated ratio and is not a claim any tool makes. All nine are free to use at the level tested; Expatistan, Mercer and the EIU sell professional products on top.

The ranking, on six tests in order

The tests, applied in this order and stated before the results were in: can it take a pair in two countries; does it output a salary rather than a price ratio; does it model income tax; does it model family costs as a household rather than a price line; does it name its data source and its date; is it free. A tool that fails the first test is ranked below every tool that passes it, whatever it does after that, because a calculator that cannot start is no use for the move in question.

1. Numbeo. Takes the pair, prints its ratios with the contributor counts and the update dates beside them, and publishes a methodology page that says in plain words how user entries and staff-gathered prices are weighted and when data is dropped. It fails the salary test, since its equivalence sentence runs on a default $12,000-a-month budget and ignores whatever you earn, and it fails tax and family outright. It leads because it is the most transparent of the five international tools about what it is, and because it prints both the rent-in and rent-out readings, which lets a reader see the 18-point gap between them instead of quoting one as the answer. Its accuracy as a price source is its own subject, in how accurate is Numbeo.
2. LivingCost.org. Takes the pair and answers in a budget, which is closer to the question than a ratio is: a single person's month and a family's month in each city, with the date the page was last updated. The family line is a budget rather than a household model, and the after-tax salary it quotes is a city average, so it fails the tax test the same way the others do. It ranks second for the family budget and the date stamp.
3. MyLifeElsewhere. Takes the pair, breaks the basket into categories, and is the only one of the five to put a childcare line on the comparison itself, at 88.7% cheaper in Berlin. It ranks below LivingCost because its city and country pages disagree by 18 points for the same move and the page gives the reader no way to know which to trust, and because its source statement, data from users, is the thinnest of the five.
4. Expatistan. A second crowd on the same pair, welded to a housing-included basket, and the reason it sits fourth is retrieval. The live comparison blocks automated requests, the newest archive capture is fourteen months old, and the page does not publish how many prices sit under its Berlin figure beyond the sentence in the capture. That leaves a reader with a 50% from July 2025 and a 47% from a search snippet, and no way to check either. The design differences from Numbeo are set out row by row in Numbeo vs Expatistan.
5. Wise cost of living. Not a comparison tool: a ranked index of cities and countries with a monthly cost each, and separate city pages. It never puts New York and Berlin on one screen, so the $68,200 in the table is entirely our division of two of its pages. It has a family-of-four budget line and no update date. It ranks fifth as the last tool that at least covers both cities.
6. SmartAsset. The strongest calculator on the page by design and the first that cannot start. It takes household pre-tax income, the number of adults and up to three children, and its method statement says it applies federal, state and local tax data to the result, which no international tool above does. Its inputs are a city and a US state, so Berlin is not an option. For a Denver-to-Austin question it is the tool to use; for a border it is not a candidate.
7. NerdWallet. A clean salary calculator over the C2ER Cost of Living Index, with the data quarter named and a plainspoken note that the index is pre-tax. US cities only, in the dropdowns rather than in a sentence.
8. Bankrate. The same C2ER data under its older name, ACCRA, with a category list that includes local city taxes, and no data date on the page. US metros only.
9. Salary.com. Three hundred US cities, a dated page, and a salary output; and a page titled Cost of Living in Berlin, New York, which a search for our pair surfaces first. Last because it is the one most likely to hand a reader the wrong Berlin.

What the order says, read from the top: nothing on this list passes the second test for an international pair. Five tools measure how much cheaper Berlin's shops are than New York's, and they disagree with each other by up to 27 points on that, and with themselves by 18. None of the five knows that German income tax on this salary is a different number from New York's, that the rent gap they measure is the largest single line and the least like a shop price, or that a child in Berlin costs a different amount to look after than a child in Brooklyn. Those are the lines that decide a move, and the tools that model them are the four that only work inside the United States.

How we tested, and the reference figure

One pair, one salary, one date. New York to Berlin because it is the pair our own homepage teaser uses and every international tool covers both cities; $150,000 because it is a plausible senior professional salary in New York and still an ordinary one in Berlin, the household rule set out in what an equivalent salary abroad means. Each tool was fetched on 20 September 2026 and its output copied verbatim; where a tool prints only a percentage, the salary column multiplies $150,000 by it. The full test log, with every URL, quotation and capture date, is in the repository's research notes.

The reference figure is the number our engine prints for the same move: a single earner on $150,000 in New York keeps the same life in Berlin on €84,621, which is $98,054 at the build's exchange rate. It is a solved salary rather than a ratio, so it is a different quantity from every number in the table, and the same caveat applies to it that applies to them: it is only as good as the lines under it. The lines are German and US income tax on that salary (€76,570 against $103,393 in take-home), rent for the same flat, healthcare, transit and the discretionary basket, each with a source and a date, and the method is on the methodology page. Where the price lines are crowdsourced, they are marked as such there, because the point of this page is what a tool tells you about itself, and that applies to ours.

Set beside the table, the engine's dollar figure sits inside the tools' range and above its middle, which is what tax does to a price ratio: Berlin's shops are cheaper, and Berlin's payroll keeps less of a gross salary than New York's does at this level, and a ratio sees the first and not the second. Which of the tools' readings a reader would have picked decides whether they arrive at an offer that is $30,000 short or $18,000 over. The pillar on what cost of living calculators get wrong takes that apart line by line; the working version is the New York to Berlin comparison, and the take-home pay by country ranking shows how much of the disagreement is tax alone.

FAQ

If your move crosses a border and a salary is attached, solve it as a salary rather than a ratio; the figure it prints for the destination is the bar an offer has to clear, and it is not an offer. If your move stays inside the United States, use SmartAsset.

Sources. All retrieved 20 September 2026 unless stated. Numbeo, New York vs Berlin, its index definitions and methodology ("assigned a weight three times higher than user-generated input", "data older than 12 months is removed"). LivingCost.org, Berlin vs New York City ("partly crowdsourced by our visitors", updated June 21, 2026). MyLifeElsewhere, New York vs Berlin and its New York vs Germany page. Expatistan's New York vs Berlin comparison as captured by the Internet Archive on 8 July 2025 (the live page returned HTTP 403). Wise, cost of living index and its Berlin page. SmartAsset, cost of living calculator. NerdWallet, cost of living calculator ("Core cost of living data is from The Cost of Living Index - COLI from the Council for Community and Economic Research, or C2ER"). Bankrate, cost of living calculator ("Data source: ACCRA"). Salary.com, cost of living calculator ("Last Update: 2026-08-26"). Our own figures come from the per-city engine, with the source split between official and crowdsourced lines stated on the methodology page.

Third-party figures are those tools' outputs on the date stated and change daily; our figures were current at publication and move with data and exchange rates, so treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own inputs. Where our comparison pages quote an equivalent salary, it is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination city and it is not a job offer. See the methodology.