What is in the Crawlora Numbeo Cost of Living dataset?

Two composite indices: 1,084 cities across 128 countries, and 163 country profiles. Each record merges Numbeo's current global rankings for all seven index families — cost of living, quality of life, crime & safety, health care, pollution, traffic and property investment — into one row, on Numbeo's New York = 100 comparable scale. It is aggregate index data only; no personal data.

Where does the data come from?

The indices are Numbeo's own published city and country rankings (please credit Numbeo as the source). Crawlora's contribution is merging all seven families into one clean, filterable record per city and per country and serving it over a REST API and MCP — refreshed from the live rankings. It reads a stored index, not a live scrape per request.

How do the indices work — what does the number mean?

Most indices are relative, with New York City = 100. A Cost of Living Index of 50 means roughly half of New York's cost; 120 means 20% more expensive. Quality of Life and Safety are Numbeo's own higher-is-better composite scores. Because they are relative, they compare places to each other, not to an absolute currency amount.

Is coverage the same for every city?

No, and the dataset is explicit about it: a city is included once at least one family ranks it, and each record carries a coverage[] list of which families it has. Larger cities carry all seven indices; smaller cities carry a subset. Property investment ranks the most cities (848), quality of life the fewest (307). Filter on the index you need and sort by it.

Call GET /datasets/numbeo-cities/search with filters like country and min/max on cost_of_living_index, quality_of_life_index, safety_index, crime_index, pollution_index and traffic_index, plus a sort; /facets?facet=country for coverage counts; and /items/{city_slug} for one city's full profile. numbeo-countries mirrors it at the country level. The same endpoints are available as hosted MCP tools.

Crawlora

Cost-of-living intelligence

Cost of living, safety and quality of life — every city, one API

Name: Crawlora Numbeo Cost of Living Dataset
Creator: Crawlora
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

1,084 cities across 128 countries and 163 country profiles, each merging all seven Numbeo indices into one queryable record — so you can ask “where is safe, affordable and livable?” in a single query. Aggregate index data only. Snapshot September 6, 2026.

Query the API See all datasets

1,084 cities

across 128countries, each one merged from Numbeo’s current global rankings so a single record answers cost, safety, health care, pollution, traffic and housing at once.

7 indices

per record — cost of living, quality of life, crime & safety, health care, pollution, trafficand property investment — all on Numbeo’s New York = 100 comparable scale, filterable and sortable.

163 countries

as their own aggregate profiles in a second index, so you can compare nations directly or drill from a country into its cities — cheapest is India at index 18.1, vs New York’s 100.

One API

search, facet and pull JSON over /datasets/numbeo-cities and /datasets/numbeo-countries — no crawl to run, also available as hosted MCP tools.

Coverage

Seven indices, unevenly by design

A city enters the dataset once any family ranks it, and each record lists the families it carries in coverage[]. Filter and sort on the index you actually need.

848

Property investment

572

Cost of living

405

Crime & safety

348

Pollution

346

Traffic

323

Health care

307

Quality of life

What the data says

Priciest cities, safest cities, best quality of life

Straight from the live index, New York = 100 for cost. Safety and quality of life are Numbeo's higher-is-better composite scores.

Most expensive (cost of living)

City	COL index
Zurich, Switzerland	124.7
George Town, Cayman Islands	118.4
Basel, Switzerland	111.5
Geneva, Switzerland	110.5
Lugano, Switzerland	109.1
Bern, Switzerland	108.9
St. Gallen, Switzerland	108.8
Lucerne, Switzerland	108.7

Safest

City	Safety
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates	88.7
Ajman, United Arab Emirates	88.5
Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates	85.3
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates	84.7
Doha, Qatar	84.6
Dubai, United Arab Emirates	83.8
Taipei, Taiwan	83.5
Muscat, Oman	81.4

Best quality of life

City	QoL
The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands	227.4
Eindhoven, Netherlands	216.8
Rotterdam, Netherlands	212.8
Utrecht, Netherlands	211.4
Gent, Belgium	210.7
Luxembourg, Luxembourg	209.7
Stuttgart, Germany	207.2
Groningen, Netherlands	206.6

Beyond cost of living

Cheapest cities, best health care, cleanest air, lightest traffic

Four more of the seven indices, each read from the same city records. Cost of Living is New York = 100 (lower is cheaper); Health Care is higher-is-better; Pollution and Traffic are lower-is-better — the tables rank the cleanest air and the least time lost commuting, not the worst.

Cheapest (cost of living)

City	COL index
Coimbatore, India	17.8
Bhopal, India	17.9
Lucknow (Lakhnau), India	18.1
Surat, India	18.3
Rajkot, India	18.5
Guwahati, India	18.6
Kochi, India	18.7
Bhubaneswar, India	18.8

Best health care

City	Health care
Kaohsiung, Taiwan	89.5
Taipei, Taiwan	87.2
Makati, Philippines	85.0
Chiang Mai, Thailand	84.7
Seoul, South Korea	83.0
The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands	82.6
Cuenca, Ecuador	81.0
Alicante, Spain	80.3

Cleanest air (lowest pollution index)

City	Pollution
Helsinki, Finland	12.5
Reykjavik, Iceland	15.5
Vienna, Austria	15.9
Tallinn, Estonia	18.0
Stockholm, Sweden	18.1
The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands	18.1
Vigo, Spain	19.3
Eindhoven, Netherlands	20.7

Lightest traffic (lowest traffic index)

City	Traffic
Tartu, Estonia	48.4
Osijek, Croatia	51.8
Villach, Austria	61.0
Split, Croatia	63.5
Plzen, Czech Republic	65.6
Rijeka, Croatia	70.0
Turku, Finland	70.3
Banja Luka, Bosnia And Herzegovina	70.3

The cheapest-cities table is dominated by South Asian and North African metros where the index sits under a fifth of New York's; the health-care leaders are a mix of Taiwanese, Nordic and Japanese cities that Numbeo's contributors rate highly for both access and quality. Pollution and traffic are contributor-reported perceptions, so read them as a sentiment index, not a sensor reading — the API returns the underlying sub-indices (for example traffic_time_index_minutes) if you want the components.

By country

Cheapest and priciest countries

Country-level Cost of Living Index (New York = 100), from the numbeo-countries index.

Cheapest to live in

Country	COL index
India	18.1
Libya	19.4
Nigeria	20.2
Pakistan	20.3
Egypt	21.5
Afghanistan	21.6

Most expensive

Country	COL index
Bermuda	135.8
Cayman Islands	119.9
Switzerland	109.8
Bahamas	101.3
Iceland	97.6
Jersey	91.1

A few micro-territories with very thin contributor samples can rank anomalously high; the tables above use the well-sampled cut. Rank on the index you need and treat small places as indicative.

Schema

What each record carries

Every field is filterable, facetable or sortable over the API.

Identity

citycity_slugcountrycoverage[]synced_at

Cost

cost_of_living_indexrent_indexgroceries_indexrestaurant_price_indexlocal_purchasing_power_index

Living

quality_of_life_indexsafety_indexcrime_indexhealth_care_indexpollution_indexclimate_index

Traffic & property

traffic_indextraffic_time_index_minutesproperty_price_to_income_ratioproperty_affordability_index

Query it

Example requests

Reads a stored index — no live scraping. Also available as hosted MCP tools.

Safest affordable cities (safe + cheap)

numbeo-cities/search?min_safety_index=70&max_cost_of_living_index=50&sort=safety_desc

Best quality of life in one country

numbeo-cities/search?country=Netherlands&sort=quality_of_life_desc

Cheapest countries to live in

numbeo-countries/search?sort=cost_of_living_asc

One city's full index profile

numbeo-cities/items/Lisbon

How many cities we cover per country

numbeo-cities/facets?facet=country

Sources & method

How it's built, and the honest caveats

Indices are Numbeo’s own published city and country rankings (please credit Numbeo). Crawlora merges all seven families into one record and serves it over an API. Aggregate index data only — no personal data.
Values are relative, New York = 100 for cost; safety and quality of life are higher-is-better composite scores. They compare places to each other, not to an absolute amount.
Coverage is uneven — each record’s coverage[] lists the families it carries; smaller cities have a subset. The long tail of very small cities has prices but no composite Cost of Living Index.
Thin-sample micro-territories can rank anomalously; filter and sort on the index you need and treat tiny places as indicative rather than precise.

Built with the same structured web-data API that powers our US Housing Markets and Airbnb markets datasets. See the full data catalog.