Numbeo prices London 42% above Berlin. Expatistan says 78%. Both are working as designed.
By Skyler Bissell · September 1, 2026 · 10 min read
London costs 42% more than Berlin on Numbeo's 2026 mid-year index with rent folded in, and 78% more on Expatistan, by the pair its own FAQ holds up as an example. Same two cities, same question, two answers far enough apart to change a decision. Neither site is broken. The gap is what happens when two instruments measure different baskets against different zeros, and it makes "numbeo vs expatistan" a better question than most people asking it suspect.
Numbeo is a crowdsourced cost of living database that scores cities against New York City at 100, splitting rent into its own index. Expatistan is a crowdsourced cost of living index that scores cities against Prague at 100, with housing always inside the basket and the whole index recalculated daily. The two scales share no zero, so their numbers cannot be compared directly, only through city-pair ratios.
TL;DR
- On the London and Berlin pair, housing included, the two published answers sit 37 points apart. Same pair, different answers.
- Numbeo's front page claims prices in nearly 13,000 cities from close to 900,000 contributors; Expatistan publishes no counters and drops low-reliability cities from its ranking. The row-by-row comparison.
- Neither index can say what salary you need after a move. One New York to Prague solve shows the size of what sits outside both baskets. What neither can tell you.
Numbeo vs Expatistan at a glance
Both are crowdsourced price indexes, both were founded in 2009, and both will tell you within seconds whether shops in Porto run cheaper than shops in Munich. The design choices underneath diverge on almost every row, and every row below is each publisher's own statement about itself.
| Dimension | Numbeo | Expatistan |
|---|---|---|
| Base of the index | Numbeo scores every city against New York City = 100 | Expatistan scores every city against Prague = 100, chosen partly because the team is based there and can watch its prices closely |
| Index variants | Numbeo publishes six: Cost of Living (excludes rent), Rent, Cost of Living Plus Rent, Groceries, Restaurants, Local Purchasing Power | Expatistan publishes one index over six groups (food, housing, clothes, transportation, personal care, entertainment); housing is always in |
| Data collection | Numbeo mixes user entries with manually gathered prices from supermarket sites, taxi sites and government institutions; manual data weighted three times higher, per its methodology page | Expatistan uses user-entered prices only; a statistical model aggregates and cleans them and strips erroneous and malicious entries, per its methodology page |
| Quality control | Numbeo claims "more than 30 sophisticated filters", including spam-IP screening | Expatistan computes a per-price reliability signal; low-reliability cities get a warning and drop out of the general ranking |
| Freshness | Numbeo uses data no more than 12 months old for most calculations; data up to 24 months old may be kept over showing nothing | Expatistan recalculates its index every day; no stated maximum age for a single price |
| Scale, as claimed | Numbeo claims 9,884,253 prices in 12,860 cities from 886,384 contributors on its front page | Expatistan publishes no counters; its world ranking lists only cities that clear the reliability gate |
| Access and paid tier | Numbeo is free to browse and sells an API, data licences and bulk downloads | Expatistan is free to browse and sells salary-calculator products for expats and HR teams |
| Sales taxes in prices | Numbeo's index definitions do not address them | Expatistan includes them "as they would be paid at the counter"; income and property taxes explicitly not counted |
Each cell restates the publisher's own claim. Numbeo statements retrieved 31 August and 1 September 2026 from its methodology and definition pages; its front-page counter moves continuously. Expatistan statements from its methodology and FAQ pages as captured by the Internet Archive on 6 June 2026, since the live site refuses automated retrieval. Sources at the foot of the page.
Two rows deserve a second look. The collection row means the sites belong to slightly different species: Numbeo mixes crowd entries with staff-gathered prices and trusts the staff three to one, while Expatistan is pure crowd plus statistics.
And the variants row is the quiet reason the two disagree so often in headlines. A journalist quoting Numbeo may be holding the rent-free basket or the rent-included one, and the choice moves London against Berlin from 21% more expensive to 42% more expensive within Numbeo alone. Expatistan never offers that choice; housing is welded in. Anyone comparing a Numbeo figure with an Expatistan figure without checking which Numbeo variant is on the table has already lost the plot, which is most of what a cost of living index measures and what 100 means.
Same pair, different answers
Because the bases differ, the only reading that crosses publishers is a city-pair ratio: divide two cities on one site, divide the same two on the other, compare. Three pairs, all from each side's published values, with our division shown against each:
| Pair | Numbeo says | Expatistan says |
|---|---|---|
| London vs Berlin | Numbeo: London 42% more expensive with rent (78.3 vs 55.2), 21% on the rent-free variant | Expatistan: London 78% more expensive, the worked example in its own FAQ; its July 2026 comparison page reads Berlin 44% cheaper, the same fact from the other end |
| New York vs Prague | Numbeo: New York 124% more expensive with rent (100 vs 44.6) | Expatistan: New York 144% more expensive (244 vs the Prague base of 100, June 2026 world index) |
| Lisbon vs Prague | Numbeo: Lisbon 4% more expensive with rent (46.3 vs 44.6) | Expatistan: Lisbon 14% more expensive (its comparison page, August 2026) |
Ratios are our arithmetic over each publisher's values: Numbeo 2026 mid-year rankings (New York = 100), retrieved 1 September 2026; Expatistan world index via the Internet Archive's 6 June 2026 capture (Prague = 100), plus its dated comparison pages. The readings carry different dates, so treat the comparison as direction and rough size.
The pattern across every pair we checked: direction always agrees, size often does not. Both sites put New York and Lisbon above Prague; Expatistan's gaps run wider each time, by 10 points on Lisbon and by around 20 on New York. Whether that pattern holds beyond these pairs is a question for a proper audit, and this page is not one. For the wider field beyond these two, seven sites like Numbeo sorts the alternatives by the job each does best. What the pairs do settle is that "the index says" is an incomplete sentence. Which index, which variant, and as of when. If Lisbon is the city on your mind, the full New York vs Lisbon ledger shows what the 4-versus-14 dispute leaves out either way.
Why the numbers differ
Four design choices are enough to produce the whole gap. The baskets differ: Expatistan weights a "typical expat" purchase pattern built from OECD, EU, US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Chilean statistical sources; Numbeo prices its own item list and lets you add or drop rent. The crowds differ: an index leaning on expat contributors samples expat neighborhoods and expat shops, while a larger mixed crowd samples something closer to the whole city. The windows differ: a daily recalculation over whatever arrived recently and a 12-to-24-month pool will read a moving market differently, especially where rents moved fast. And the bases differ, which does not change a pair ratio but decides what the headline number looks like and how precise the reference stays; Expatistan keeps its base city under its own eyes in Prague, while Numbeo's New York base floats on the same crowd as everything else.
Expatistan's FAQ even has to explain why "Berlin is 44% cheaper than London" and "London is 78% more expensive than Berlin" are the same statement, since 44 units off a 100-unit London is a 78% climb back from Berlin's 56. That arithmetic asymmetry catches readers of both sites. Before quoting either, remember that a percentage between two cities depends on which city you stand in when you say it.
What neither index can tell you
Here the two rivals are identical. Numbeo's index definitions cover consumer prices, rents, groceries, restaurants and purchasing power, and never mention income tax. Expatistan says it plainly in its FAQ: prices include taxes paid at the counter, and "currently we do not take into account other kinds of taxes, such as income taxes, property taxes, etc." Childcare subsidies, healthcare systems and statutory leave are likewise outside both baskets, because none of them is a shelf price. That boundary is the structural half of what every cost-of-living calculator gets wrong, and no amount of contributor volume moves it.
Prague makes the cleanest demonstration, since it is Expatistan's own reference point. Expatistan prices Prague at 100 against New York's 244, so the ratio arithmetic says a New Yorker on $150,000 keeps their life on about 41% of it, roughly $61,500. Numbeo's rent-included ratio is a touch kinder at about $66,900. Our engine solves the same move by holding the household's whole position level, with Czech income tax, Czech healthcare and Prague rent in the ledger, and returns CZK 1,702,641, which is $81,544 at the current rate. That lands between a fifth and a third above both ratio readings. The reasons are visible line by line: Czechia takes 27.9% of the converted CZK 3,132,000 salary while New York takes 31.1% of $150,000, and the Czech side of the ledger carries 20 statutory vacation days and a parental leave system New York state cannot match. Cheap shelves, a lighter tax bill and a statutory floor all pull the number, and not one of the three lives in either index. Where the whole layer sits country by country is in take-home pay by country.
Which one to reach for
Reach for Numbeo when coverage is the constraint: it claims price data in more towns than any rival, and its separate rent index lets you put housing under its own light. Reach for Expatistan when you want a curated read: one basket, housing always counted, a daily recalculation, and a ranking that would rather exclude a thin city than print a shaky number for it. Read both against each other on a pair that matters to you; where they agree, believe the direction, and where they split, suspect the basket before you suspect the cities.
Then notice which question you are holding. "Are prices higher there?" is a question both sites answer well. "What salary do I need there?" runs through two tax codes, two healthcare systems and two statutory floors, and neither publisher claims otherwise. When your question has a salary in it, solve your own two cities and let the indexes do the job they were built for.
FAQ
Can I compare a Numbeo score with an Expatistan score?
Not directly. Numbeo measures every city against New York at 100 and Expatistan measures every city against Prague at 100, so the two scales share no zero. What does travel between publishers is a city-pair ratio: divide two cities' values on the same site, and compare that ratio with the same division done on the other site. Both sites also publish ready-made pairwise comparison pages, which are the cleaner way to read one pair.
Why is Expatistan's index based on Prague?
Expatistan gives three reasons on its methodology page: Prague is neither among the most expensive cities nor the cheapest, it has a large expat community, and the team is based there, so they can monitor Prague prices closely and keep the reference reliable. Every other city's value is then calculated by comparing its cost of living to Prague's.
How current are Numbeo and Expatistan prices?
Numbeo states that most calculations use data no more than 12 months old, and that it may keep data up to 24 months old rather than show nothing. Expatistan states that its index is recalculated every day, and flags or excludes cities whose underlying data its reliability model does not trust; its pages do not state a maximum age for an individual price. On both sites, a city with few recent contributions is only as current as its last contributor.
Which should I use when planning a move abroad?
Both work for the price question: whether shops, rent and restaurants run higher or lower than where you live now. A move decision adds layers neither basket holds, income taxes, childcare, healthcare and statutory leave among them, so use an index to set price expectations and an equivalence calculation to settle the salary; cityparity vs Numbeo shows the two instruments side by side on one real move.
Sources. Numbeo index definitions and the New York base: Numbeo, About the Cost of Living Indexes; collection model, weighting, filters and freshness: Numbeo, Motivation and Methodology; city values from its 2026 mid-year rankings, retrieved 1 September 2026, front-page counter same date. Expatistan base, basket, collection and reliability model: Expatistan, How does it work; taxes-at-the-counter statement and the London and Berlin example: Expatistan, FAQ; world index values from its index page. Expatistan pages read via the Internet Archive's 6 June 2026 captures, with its dated comparison pages for the July and August 2026 pair readings, because the live site blocks automated retrieval. Equivalent salaries and tax figures are computed by cityparity's engine from official sources; per-field provenance is in data/_meta.json, and our own price lines split between official and crowdsourced sources as described in the methodology.
Equivalent salaries solve for equal net cash after tax, housing, childcare, healthcare and the cash value of statutory benefits, and they are the salary an offer has to clear rather than a salary any employer is obliged to pay. See the methodology.