# Numbeo Cost of Living & Quality of Life Scraper | from $1/1K (`bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living`) Actor

Scrape itemized cost-of-living prices (55 items: restaurants, groceries, transport, utilities, rent, salaries) and quality-of-life indices (safety, health care, climate, pollution, traffic, purchasing power) by city from Numbeo.com. No API key required.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living.md
- **Developed by:** [Vitalii Bondarev](https://apify.com/bovi) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, Travel, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $3.75 / 1,000 numbeo cost of living & quality of life scraper | from $1/1ks

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Numbeo Cost of Living & Quality of Life Scraper | No API key

For relocation researchers, salary calculators, and AI agents comparing city cost-of-living and livability — without a Numbeo API subscription.

**No API key required.** No login. **$1.00/1,000 price items** · **$3.00/1,000 city index records** (Pay Per Event). Every record includes `parse_confidence` (0.0–1.0) and `warnings`.

***

### What data you get

#### Cost-of-living mode — 55 itemized prices per city

One record **per item**, grouped into 10 categories: Restaurants, Markets, Transportation, Utilities (Monthly), Sports and Leisure, Childcare, Clothing and Shoes, Rent Per Month, Buy Apartment Price, Salaries and Financing.

- `city`, `city_slug`, `category`, `item` (e.g. "Meal at an Inexpensive Restaurant")
- `price`, `currency` (parsed from the displayed value, e.g. `$25.00` → `price=25.0, currency="$"`)
- `price_low`, `price_high` — the observed contributor range shown on Numbeo's price bar

#### Quality-of-life mode — composite indices per city

One record **per city** with 8 sub-indices (each a numeric score + qualitative rating: Very High/High/Moderate/Low/Very Low) and the overall composite:

- `purchasing_power_index` / `purchasing_power_rating`
- `safety_index` / `safety_rating`
- `health_care_index` / `health_care_rating`
- `climate_index` / `climate_rating`
- `cost_of_living_index` / `cost_of_living_rating`
- `property_price_to_income_ratio` / `property_price_to_income_rating`
- `traffic_commute_time_index` / `traffic_commute_time_rating`
- `pollution_index` / `pollution_rating`
- `qol_index` — the overall composite Quality of Life Index

***

### Access path & compliance

Both endpoints are **server-rendered HTML, no Cloudflare/JS challenge** — fetched with `curl_cffi` browser-TLS impersonation, no browser or residential proxy required (verified live 2026-07-15).

- `numbeo.com/robots.txt` disallows only `/heavy_crawling.any` — both `/cost-of-living/in/<city>` and `/quality-of-life/in/<city>` are fully clean, no restrictions.
- No login wall, no rate-limit encountered during recon probing.

***

### Input

| Field | Mode | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `mode` | both | `cost-of-living` or `quality-of-life` |
| `cities` | both | City names, e.g. `["New York", "London", "Tokyo"]` — auto-slugified (spaces → hyphens) |
| `maxItems` | cost-of-living | Max total price-item records across all cities (0 = no limit) |

City names are auto-converted to Numbeo's URL slug format (`"New York"` → `"New-York"`). **Ambiguous city names** (multiple cities share a name, e.g. several "Cambridge"s) may resolve to the wrong page or a 404 — pass the exact Numbeo slug (visible in the site's own URL) for those cases.

### Output examples

**Cost-of-living (abridged):**

```json
{
  "city": "New York", "city_slug": "New-York",
  "category": "Restaurants", "item": "Meal at an Inexpensive Restaurant",
  "price": 25.0, "currency": "$", "price_low": 15.0, "price_high": 50.0,
  "mode": "cost-of-living", "scraped_at": "2026-07-15T10:00:00Z",
  "parse_confidence": 1.0, "warnings": []
}
```

**Quality-of-life (abridged):**

```json
{
  "city": "New York", "city_slug": "New-York",
  "qol_index": 136.89,
  "purchasing_power_index": 105.49, "purchasing_power_rating": "High",
  "safety_index": 49.20, "safety_rating": "Moderate",
  "cost_of_living_index": 100.00, "cost_of_living_rating": "Very High",
  "mode": "quality-of-life", "scraped_at": "2026-07-15T10:00:00Z",
  "parse_confidence": 1.0, "warnings": []
}
```

### Edge cases

- **Unresolvable / misspelled city**: cost-of-living mode pushes one record with `warnings: ["fetch_failed"]`, all price fields `null`; quality-of-life mode does the same for its one record.
- **City page exists but table format changed**: `warnings: ["no_items_parsed"]` (cost-of-living) or `["no_indices_parsed"]` (quality-of-life), `parse_confidence` near 0 — a loud signal to re-check the site structure, not a silent empty result.
- **Partial index set** (rare small cities missing e.g. a Climate Index): `warnings: ["some_indices_missing"]`, the missing sub-index fields are `null`, others still populate.

### Known limitations

- No historical trend data (Numbeo's `/cost-of-living/prices_by_city.jsp` history view isn't covered by this actor's two modes).
- Currency is whatever Numbeo displays server-side for that city (mostly USD by default) — no currency-conversion parameter in this version.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

cost-of-living: 55 itemized prices per city (restaurants, groceries, transport, utilities, rent, salaries), one record per item. quality-of-life: 8 composite sub-indices + overall score per city, one record per city.

## `cities` (type: `array`):

City names. Plain names are auto-slugified (spaces -> hyphens, e.g. 'New York' -> 'New-York'); for ambiguous city names use the exact Numbeo URL slug (check numbeo.com for the precise city page).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

cost-of-living mode only: max total price-item records across all cities (0 = no limit, all ~55 items/city). Ignored in quality-of-life mode (always 1 record/city).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "cost-of-living",
  "cities": [
    "New York",
    "London",
    "Tokyo"
  ]
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Dataset containing Numbeo records (cost-of-living mode: category/item/price/currency/price\_low/price\_high per item; quality-of-life mode: 8 sub-indices + composite score per city).

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "mode": "cost-of-living",
    "cities": [
        "New York",
        "London",
        "Tokyo"
    ],
    "maxItems": 0
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "mode": "cost-of-living",
    "cities": [
        "New York",
        "London",
        "Tokyo",
    ],
    "maxItems": 0,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "mode": "cost-of-living",
  "cities": [
    "New York",
    "London",
    "Tokyo"
  ],
  "maxItems": 0
}' |
apify call bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,bovi/numbeo-cost-of-living"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/5lL4sMVFnTQigi8Wc/builds/lFO4blTX2dD0WPbOV/openapi.json