Cost of Living in Barcelona

Hello, I received a proposal of 20.000€ Gross anual salary. I'll need to move and find a place to stay. Is this a confortable monthly payment? Thanks

Some clarity on the salaries and cost of living. As a foreigner, I've been living in Barcelona for 14 years now. Cleaners, waiters, and professionals with less experience tend to earn around €1100-€1300 net. This means that you've already paid around €200 in taxes and your boss has paid 500€ in social security healtcare. Obviously not enough to live in the best/most touristic areas, put perfectly fine outside those 3-4 neighbourhoods. Healthcare is absolutely free and in some neigbourhoods doesn't even make sense to pay private medical healthcare, i.e. mutua (Sarria or Pedralbes) because you already have free access to top-notch health centers. If you decide to pay so, prices are roughly €50 a month. And yes, you've already been deducted €500 from your earnings in public healthcare, so the only real benefits for the standard private healthcare is that you get tested quickly and if you decide more often, and you get to choose who your doctor will be when your wife delivers the baby

Transport is very cheap - expect to pay 40€-50€ at most/monthy. I have a car and it costs me about €2000 yearly (fuel, taxes, insurance for 15-20k km driven). Standard taxi ride is 6-10€ (double in the night). Restaurants price are €20-€25 per person in a good restaurant with quality food. High-end restaurants cost €40-€60 per person. Possible to eat very decent lunch in many places for €10-€12/daily menu. Great variety. Bars and clubs - beer is 3-5€, shots €2-€3, drinks 7-12€. Most nightclubs are free to enter until 1.30am. Rent prices - small room in the central areas is €400. A bigger and more luxurious one is €500-€600. Expenses included. Rooms outside the central neighbourhoods are €300-€350. Apartment prices are roughly €20/m2 for the small and centric apartments. €15/m2 for the bigger centric apartments. 12/m2 for bigger but not centric apartments and 8-10€ for bigger apartments in not-so-cool neighbourhods. Water is €30/month. Telephone and internet - €50. Electricity and gas - €60 (including winter months on central gas heating). Parking is €80-€120 a month, but it's flexible. Hourly parking in most places is around €3/hour.

If you speak native german or english and you work in IT or similar, you'll get around €2000 net salary easily. For a single person, that's quite good, given that the offices are close to the beach and healthcare is free. These companies also pay bonuses and food coupons so expect to spend €200/monthly on groceries at most (even if you eat shrimp, blueberries and sirloin steaks). Private kindergartens are €300-€800/month. Golf course game is €50-€70. Pitch & Putt - €15. Highways in Cataluña are expensive - roughly €10/80km.
Gym is €35-€50. Flights to most european cities are €70-€150 for a roundtrip. As some other people have said, with a salary of €3000 you are king. I was making that for around 3 years and I managed to save €30k with the idea to have my own business.

Cost of living in Madrid is similar, while Valencia rent and cost of living is twice less. Seems a deal, but Valencia doesn't have the charm of Madrid and Barcelona. Infrastructure is top-notch.

Weather in Barcelona is great (for european city) with the only exception being mid-July to mid-August when it's extremely hot and humid (30C all day all night).

In general, if you don't have kids, a net salary of €1500 is a good start. Anything less limits your lifestlye and anything more improves on it. Minimum salary in Spain is €800 and I already mentioned that south of spain and valencia are twice as cheaper as Barcelona, Madrid and Basque country. So you aim to earn at lest double that in these areas to have a decent lifestyle.

Some have asked what is a decent amount to live off of as a student. I am a doctoral student from he US finishing their degree in Econ, with a scholarship from the Catalan government. My net income from the scholarship is 1083€. I've known people who are able to live off this - I haven't managed, but this comes from your lifestyle and what you define as comfortable (for example, I eat out more than I should be). I had savings that I built up from when I worked in the US that I've been consuming slowly over the past 5.5 years (and even then I still have enough to conceivably put a down payment on a decent apartment when I start working). I've kept meticulous consumption records and estimate that I've spent on average 1250€/month to live comfortably in Barcelona as a student.

What is comfortably? I share an apartment in Nova Ezquerra de l'Example near Sants Estació, a 3 bedroom apartment, 78 sq. m. apartment that my friends and I furnished, which comes to 1000€/month. We don't pay water, and for the three of us electricity is about 37€/month, gas around 25€/month, and internet is 33€/month. I pay 350€/month rent since my room is toward the street and get sunlight with balcony access. My gym membership is 26.9€/month. All in all, I consider it quite cheap.

Prior to defending my thesis, I will be starting a job at a consultancy that will pay me a base salary of 45000€ gross, plus a fixed bonus a year that I was able to negotiate given some outside offers I had back in the US, and a variable performance bonus. I would say that here, this type of salary is outside the norm (corporate bank jobs, for example at la Caixa, will pay a little more than this).

You'll find that the labor market is dominated by call center work. And that getting 30k€ is probably considered decent money. But then again, except for rent (unless you're fortunate enough to purchase your own place and pay less), most other aspects of life here is cheap.

The most attractive Spanish city + Spain is one of the very few countries in eu that allows naturalization by investment

This brought the money in real estate from a lot of rich 3rdworlders that who knows how they made them, and so landlords skyrocketed the prices

Very good!!! I live here and it’s all right average prices!

Brutal salaries and hard to determine was correct when an "average" is in place as average takes in people from too broad a spectrum.
Bottom line is this city doesn't really work in terms of what you can earn vs cost of living. You'll get your two days a week down the beach and enjoy a charming city but when it comes to wanting to buy a house, having a family or saving for a decent pension then maybe best to not spend a long time in this city. Obviously there is a tiny percentage of people who get a decent salary and they'll only to be too glad to tell you (like some of the below on this thread).
I would say average salary here is 1200 euro net. If you are self-employed the make it really hard which explains why 25% of the Spanish economy is black money.
A poisoned apple of my city in my opinion, but hey, thats the price of beauty. Here we go with Venice 2.0 based on the catalan greed.

Hey guys, is that possible to live with 4000euro per month for 2 people?

Giga, please give us some more generic data so we can blind guess you request.
i am assuming human being, right?

Cheers.

Ive been in barcelona 10 years now, and am married with kids. The rent has gone up dramatically over the past 2 years. we moved just in time, and pay 750 for a 4 bed apartment fairly central (Sagrada Familia). Schools are about 150 + food per child for semi private.

As for cost of living, as long as you don´t go to tourist places all the time its not too bad eating out and drinking locally, 1.50 a bottle of beer, and lunch for 10 euros 3 courses. Restaurants shouldnt be more than 30 pp outside the tourist trap.

The problem is the rent vs salary. For the average salary here, the rent should be about 4-500 a month, and apartments should be 100,000 instead of 300,000. The salaries are awful. IT is a little better, and you can earn 2000+ pcm, but when you are paying half that for rent and bills, then kids, food etc, a single (even good) income is very hard to live on.

I know my salary in London would be 4 or 5 times what i earn here, but you arent coming for the salary, youre coming for the life and soul of the city.

I'm from Barcelona. The average net salary per month is 1000€. IT jobs 1400€. A 3 bedroom flat 1000€.
My 2016 bills (i live alone). Water, every two months, july-august 29,19€, september-october 30,05€. Light, every month, september, 27,01€, october, 29,34€. Gas, every two months, june-july 15,23€, august-september, 16,13€.
Monthly metro pass, 52,75€ (web tmb.cat).
Web to look for a job: infojobs
To have an idea of prices of restaurants: web bcnrestaurantes.com and eltenedor.es, on a saturday night an average place is 25-30€. Of course there are more expensive restaurants, and places to eat for less.
An alcoholic drink in a pub on a saturday night is 10-14€, a beer 3-6€.
At a bar, a coke 2,20.
Of course they are average prices, it is not the same to be at the neighbourhood bar than being in a rooftop at Passeig the Gracia.

Go to Barcelona to enjoy the movida, the nightlife, the nice weather, the social people and the great food, not to hope to have a great career in a qualified job with good savings.

Even an experienced and qualified IT specialist hardly banks more than 1500 EUR, in Poland and Ukraine you could make almost x2 that amount working in the outsourcing of the corporates, in UK/Ireland approx. x3 and in the GCC countries even x4.

Hi my name is mahdiyar i'm iranian i want live in barcelona
I wont buy a cafe or restuarant

Please help me how much cost of living index in barcelona?
Thank you and good loock

Hi all.
Just to share an experience. I am an East european, 2 and a half EU languages, master in accounting, 6 years proven experience and I got rejected on most of the interviews for asking 30k Gross/annual. That's 1.7k net.
Good luck to you all.

I honestly have no idea where a lot of these salaries are coming from ... I'm from the US (with citizenship from an EU country) and have lived in Barcelona for 2.5 years. When I first came and got my job paying me 25,000€ per year, I thought it was a joke. I had 4 years of excellent experience in the US at a huge and highly respected company. I'd just finished an international MBA. I already spoke Spanish and had begun learning Catalan (also spoke other Romance languages and, obviously, English as a native). In the US, I could probably find a job paying ~$65-70,000/year. I thought that I should be earning much more than 25k per year, but when locals found out how much I was making, they were largely very impressed. These were college educated people in their late 20s and early 30s. I have looked for other jobs on various sites over the past two years and even positions that are higher up than my current position seldom offer me much more than what I make now (in many cases, they offer less).

There definitely are jobs that pay more than 30,000, but they are not the norm (unless you're in a high management position or IT/programming).

Rent: I got very lucky with my place and found a multi-bedroom apartment (okay, 2 of the 3 bedrooms are really small) for just 550 per month in Sants ... not far from Sants Estació. I've been looking for a new place, though, and find that it's next to impossible to get something in the center (even as far out as Sants, which is on the border with L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (not Barcelona city)), that's in good condition for less than 700-800€. The Raval is maybe the only exception. You can, of course, find great apartments to share in the center and end up paying less than 500, but you won't be living alone.

All that being said, I don't know how, but here I do a lot more with a lot less and, as others have said, you earn a lot less than in North America and Northern European countries (though I have yet to see normal office jobs in London paying more than 25,000 GBP), but the lifestyle, climate, etc. more than make up for it.

I am Brazilian and I will be an EXPAT in Barcelona soon.
I would appreciate if some one could tell me how much it is the %taxes in Spain.
Thank you in advance.

Regards, Mariana

You guys that complain about Barcelona and suggest people moving in northern countries better think again . People make sure before you move anywhere to check online about the rents and taxes on each country. At the moment I'm living in London, I earn around 1400£ after taxes and believeme this is the real salaries in London between 1200-1700( skilled jobs), the rent for a 1 bed flat is at least 1100£ and believe me the rooms are no bigger than the prison rooms + at least 85£ of council tax per month + water internet etc.
Of course you will need to move with the train because the car is almost impossible to have due to the high taxes so put 160£ per month on train offers , then put 300£ at least food and lets say you don't go out at all to have fun and drink so you end up paying more than you earn.

Hi,
Ive been living here for 7 years. Most of the people I know: Teachers, Waiters, architects, office workers get about 1000 a month, or less. Barcelona is a lovely city but its getting more and more expensive all the time and wages don't seem to be going up. Barcelona is a beautiful city but it can be hard.

Hi Divya! Barcelona is one of the best cities to live in the world, especially if you don't work:). If you are alone, anything more than 2000€ net a month is more than sufficient for a great lifestyle over here. Average salary goes between 1200 and 1500 a month. Normally the salaries are not as high as those in Northern Europe, so if you want to save a lot, here is not the place. But it depends on how much you will earn. As for costs, the rent will be your biggest expense, anything else is reasonably cheap, especially going/eating out. My advice, if they are going to pay you less than 1500€, think again before coming.

is cheaper than Italy. here close to venice a 50 mt apartment goes for about 600-800. mine is 700 and is 30 minutes away from Venice. if you are looking next to Venice or in center it goes for over 1000 for sure. i am looking to get a job that is offering 900 in Barcelona. i was afraid that 900 was not to much. but reading some comments i can get by.

I'm spanish and from Barcelona.

Just to help.
In Barcelona you should earn a little bit more than in other cities of Catalonia because the whole prices are also a little bit more expensive.
If you earn between 900-1000€ you won't have any problem to live in good conditions.
If you earn more than 3000€ you're a boss, seriously.
I've traveled a lot and I can tell you that living in Spain is cheap, if you compare it with north european countries or France, Germany, etc.
The problem is that we pay 21% of tax right now, such a shame.
The prices here on the website are okay, but you could find these foods and drinks cheaper.
So if you come from a richer country in Barcelona you'll live like a king, don't have to worry.
Don't have to say that if you come here only on vacations you can have the best time of your life.
But if you come here to find a job... good luck, because it's quite difficult. I recommend to come during summer because you can find more job opportunities, as there is a LOT of turism and more during summer, of course.

Hope you enjoy this beautiful city.

I decided to move to Barcelona with my family but I have more than 6 months trying to find a job online and I would say that no one hires/ at least interviews me because I'm not there (I would prefer moving only after getting a job). I speak Spanish and English fluently. Do you have any suggestion on where should I search (infojobs is my primary source).
Also it would be useful to know the minimum amount of money necessary monthly to live decently (would 1000 euro be enough for rent, utilities, transport and food?)

Thank you

1400€ in nowhere near the average net salary. I would say 1100-1200€ and believe me, this 200-300€ make a big difference.

@ #Khaled Ahmed, I have same offer as you. For sure this is another type of scam. Average salary would be 1500 euros. As far as google says so.

I want to move to Barcelona with a monthly income of 9000 dollars. Can I live fairly well?