Cost of Living API

The Numbeo Data API gives you programmatic access to current consumer prices, rent levels and cost of living indices for thousands of cities and countries worldwide. Responses are returned as machine-readable JSON, so you can integrate global pricing data directly into your own applications.

What you get with the Numbeo Data API

Current prices for ~60 everyday items (groceries, restaurants, transport, utilities) per city and per country
Cost of Living, Rent, Groceries and Restaurant Price indices for cities and countries
Historical cost of living data to track price changes over time
City lookup by name, by ISO country code, or by latitude/longitude coordinates
Results convertible to any currency you specify
Commercial usage rights under our Terms of Use

Where the Cost of Living API is used

Economic research, consulting & data productsAnalytics firms, consultancies and economic-development agencies feed dashboards, models and studies with structured global price data. Macro and alternative-data teams also use it as a near-real-time consumer-price signal where official CPI series lag.

Financial services & fintechBanks, lenders, insurers and fintech apps use it to gauge local purchasing power and feed affordability scoring, lending decisions, budgeting tools and risk models across markets.

Marketing & advertisingMarketing teams and programmatic platforms use purchasing-power and cost-of-living data to adjust ad bids by a market's spending power, allocate budgets across regions, and tailor pricing and offers to what each audience can afford.

Relocation, immigration & expat servicesRelocation management software and global mobility platforms use city-to-city cost-of-living differentials to size relocation packages, housing allowances and per-diems, and to give corporate clients accurate move-cost estimates.

HR, payroll & global compensationPayroll, compensation and workforce platforms benchmark salaries against local living costs, setting location-based pay bands and cost-of-living adjustments for remote and distributed teams.

Real estate & property investmentProperty marketplaces and proptech tools combine rent, price, cost-of-living and other data helping investors judge which markets are genuinely profitable and sustainable.

Travel & tourismBooking sites, travel guides and tour operators estimate realistic daily spend on meals, local transport and taxis, helping travellers budget a trip and rank destinations by affordability before booking.

Education & study abroadStudy-abroad platforms and university-ranking providers combine tuition fees with local living costs to show students the full cost of a degree and compare destinations on real affordability.

Example queries

All endpoints require an api_key parameter. Replace YOUR_API_KEY below with your own key. For the complete list of endpoints and parameters, see the full API documentation.

Cost of living for a city

Fetch current prices for a single city. You can query by name, by city code, or by coordinates:

curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/city_prices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&query=London,%20United%20Kingdom"
curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/city_prices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&city=London&country=United%20Kingdom"
curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/city_prices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&query=51.509865,-0.118092"

Sample response (truncated):

{
  "name": "London, United Kingdom",
  "currency": "GBP",
  "city_id": 6512,
  "prices": [
    {
      "item_id": 1,
      "item_name": "Meal, Inexpensive Restaurant, Restaurants",
      "average_price": 15,
      "lowest_price": 10,
      "highest_price": 30,
      "data_points": 82
    }
  ]
}

Cost of living for a country

Fetch the latest country-level prices. The country can be a name or an ISO 3166 code:

curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/country_prices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&country=Germany"

{
  "name": "Germany",
  "contributors": 45,
  "monthLastUpdate": 4,
  "prices": [
    {
      "item_id": 1,
      "item_name": "Meal, Inexpensive Restaurant, Restaurants",
      "average_price": 12.5,
      "lowest_price": 9,
      "highest_price": 20,
      "data_points": 40
    }
  ]
}

Cost of living index

If you need the summary indices rather than individual item prices, use the indices endpoints:

curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/indices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&query=London,%20United%20Kingdom"
curl "https://www.numbeo.com/api/country_indices?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&country=Germany"

Ready to start?

See plans and pricing on the Numbeo Data API page, or read the complete API documentation for every available endpoint and parameter.

Frequently asked questions

Which cities and countries are covered?

The Numbeo Cost of Living API covers thousands of cities and every country with enough crowdsourced data, and supports lookup by city name, ISO country code or latitude and longitude coordinates.

What data format does the API return?

All endpoints return JSON. Each cost of living data response includes item-level prices, the number of data points, and metadata such as the currency and when the data was last updated.

Is the Cost of Living API free?

Numbeo offers paid API plans with monthly request quotas. See the Numbeo Data API page for current plans and pricing.

How often is the cost of living data updated?

Prices are updated continuously from crowdsourced contributions; each response reports the month and year it was last updated.

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