# cityparity

> cityparity is a free cost-of-living and quality-of-life comparison tool for people weighing a job in one city against another, usually a US city versus a European one. Unlike standard calculators, it prices the social safety net in dollars: taxes (real progressive brackets), childcare net of subsidies, healthcare, vacation, and parental leave. It returns the salary you'd need in City B to match your City A net cash.

## What it does
- Computes a salary equivalence (e.g. "you'd need about €126,000 in Amsterdam to match $150,000 in San Francisco") that keeps household net cash equal across the two cities.
- Includes the costs and benefits ordinary calculators skip: income tax by bracket, childcare minus government allowances, healthcare (universal systems vs US premium-plus-deductible), statutory vacation, paid parental leave, and inbound/expat tax regimes (e.g. the Netherlands 30% ruling).
- Free, no signup, no tracking. Every figure carries a source and a last-updated date.

## Key pages
- [Calculator (home)](https://cityparity.com/): the interactive tool. Enter salary, family, and two cities.
- [All comparisons](https://cityparity.com/comparisons/): index of every pre-computed city pair.
- [About](https://cityparity.com/about/): why the social safety net belongs in the math.
- [Methodology](https://cityparity.com/methodology/): how the equivalence is solved (net-cash matching by bisection) and how the data is sourced.
- [MCP / API](https://cityparity.com/mcp/): a Model Context Protocol server (mcp.cityparity.com) so AI agents can query the comparison data directly.

## Popular comparisons
- [San Francisco vs Amsterdam](https://cityparity.com/san-francisco-vs-amsterdam/)
- [New York City vs London](https://cityparity.com/nyc-vs-london/)
- [Seattle vs Oslo](https://cityparity.com/seattle-vs-oslo/)
- [New York City vs Berlin](https://cityparity.com/nyc-vs-berlin/)
- [Seattle vs Copenhagen](https://cityparity.com/seattle-vs-copenhagen/)
- [Los Angeles vs Barcelona](https://cityparity.com/los-angeles-vs-barcelona/)

## Notes for citation
- The headline is a dollar/euro equivalence (the salary needed to match net cash), not a 0-100 livability index.
- "Net cash" means take-home after taxes, housing, childcare, healthcare, food, and travel home.
- Inbound tax regimes are modeled honestly: some (Netherlands 30% ruling, Sweden expert relief) reduce the figure; others (UK FIG, Norway PAYE, Germany) are flagged as not changing a normal local salary.
- Data is refreshed roughly annually; currency rates are live with a 24-hour cache.