How we label every number
Four kinds of source exist on the site. Each important figure carries one of these badges, a date, and the assumptions behind it. A badge always has words, never only a color.
- Official source
- Published by a government or statistics agency, shown with its publication date.
- Market sample
- Collected from advertised ranges or reported pay. Useful, but a sample, not a census.
- Modeled calculation
- Computed by our rules from your inputs and the assumptions listed beside it.
- Posted listings
- Job postings collected from employers’ own careers pages and hiring systems. Each shows when it was posted and links to the employer’s page. Postings can close without notice.
- Demonstration data
- Illustrative values that show how the numbers fit together. Not current market data, so do not rely on them for decisions.
Today, destination snapshots and city costs are demonstration data, and the badge says so wherever they appear. Job listings are real postings collected by third-party providers and labeled as posted listings. We do not verify them. Tax results are modeled calculations. As official and market sources are added, the figures they power will carry the Official source and Market sample labels.
What “after tax” includes
Today, the calculator estimates take-home pay for a single resident employee with no dependants. It applies national income tax and the main mandatory employee contributions, such as pension, health and unemployment insurance where they exist.
It does not yet include state, provincial or local taxes, joint household filing, private insurance, employer benefits or special regimes. Each destination lists its own assumptions and exclusions beside the result.
We are building a far deeper tax calculator for all eight countries, with detailed calculations for each national system. Every result in it is tied to a named tax year, such as the 2024 tax policy or the 2026 tax policy, so you always know which rules produced a figure. When a country changes its rules, we add the new year rather than quietly overwriting the old one.
Until then, the rules in the current calculator are simplified approximations of recent national tax years, mostly 2024. Exchange rates are fixed reference rates, not live ones. Treat results as a way to compare the shape of different systems, not as a payslip. For a decision with money on it, check the official source or speak to an authorized professional.
How living costs are built
Each city has monthly values for one adult in seven categories. For a larger household, housing rises with size, groceries, utilities, transport and healthcare scale per person, and childcare and school are counted per child.
Our cost figures are built from market intelligence supplied by vendors we have approved. We choose and review those vendors ourselves, and we may add, replace or remove them whenever we see fit, so the data behind a figure can change over time. Where a figure on the site is illustrative, it is rounded and marked as demonstration data.
Real costs vary by neighborhood, lifestyle and timing, so use the comparison to see how cities relate to each other, not to set a budget to the dollar.
Recommendations, not rankings
We do not publish a single league table of countries. One score for everyone would hide the thing that matters: what each person in a household values. A family weighing schools, a spouse’s career and distance from relatives will weigh them differently from a single engineer chasing salary.
Instead, we recommend destinations based on the scenario you set with us: your occupation, income, household and priorities. Different scenarios get different recommendations, and each one shows the figures behind it, so you can see why and disagree. Recommendations are general information, not advice. The decision is yours.
Privacy by design
The tools ask for as little as possible. Without an account, the scenario you build stays in your browser tab and is cleared when you close it. We never receive it. If you create an account, you choose what to add, and we never ask for the name of a child or of any other family member. We do ask for the details that shape your numbers: for example, the industry a partner works in, a child’s age so we can work out the school level or childcare that applies, and everyday costs such as food and transport.
Read the full privacy policy.
What is available
Open to everyone: the destination guides, the jobs explorer, the after-tax pay calculator, the cost-of-living comparison, salary intelligence and professional support. With a free account: your move profile, private document storage, the household life planner, the AI mobility guide and a copy of your data.
See Features for what each one does, how it works and what to know before you rely on it.
Corrections
If a figure looks wrong, we want to know. Tell us which page and which number through the contact form, and we will look into it and fix what needs fixing.