Expatistan Cost of Living Scraper

Scrape cost of living data from Expatistan.com. Extract city rankings with price indices and detailed prices across 6 categories: Food, Housing, Clothes, Transportation, Personal Care, and Entertainment.

What data can you get?

Rankings Mode (scrapeDetails = false)

For each city in the rankings:

• City name and country
• Rank (global position)
• Price index (relative cost of living score)
• URL to the city's detail page

Detail Mode (scrapeDetails = true)

Everything from rankings mode, plus 50+ individual price items grouped by category:

• Food: lunch menu, fast food combo, chicken, milk, eggs, tomatoes, cheese, apples, potatoes, beer, wine, coca-cola, bread
• Housing: rent (studio + apartment, expensive + normal area), utilities, internet, TV, microwave, laundry detergent, cleaning help
• Clothes: jeans, summer dress, sport shoes, business shoes
• Transportation: new car, gas, monthly transit pass, taxi ride
• Personal Care: cold medicine, antibiotics, doctor visit, tampons, deodorant, shampoo, toilet paper, toothpaste, haircut
• Entertainment: dinner out, movie tickets, theater tickets, Italian restaurant dinner, cocktail, cappuccino, beer in pub, iPad, mobile tariff, gym membership, cigarettes

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	string[]	["New York", "London"]	City names to search for. Matched against Expatistan's city index.
maxListings	integer	50	Maximum number of cities to scrape. Set to 0 for all (~107 cities).
scrapeDetails	boolean	true	Whether to visit each city's page for full category prices.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy settings. Recommended since Expatistan uses Cloudflare.

Example Output (Detail Mode)

{
  "city": "New York City",
  "country": "United States",
  "rank": 1,
  "priceIndex": 243,
  "url": "https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/new-york-city",
  "categories": [
    {
      "name": "Food",
      "items": [
        {
          "item": "Basic lunchtime menu (including a drink) in the business district",
          "price": "$29",
          "priceValue": 29,
          "currency": "$"
        },
        {
          "item": "Combo meal in fast food restaurant (big mac meal or similar)",
          "price": "$13",
          "priceValue": 13,
          "currency": "$"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Housing",
      "items": [
        {
          "item": "Monthly rent for 85 m2 (900 sqft) furnished accommodation in expensive area",
          "price": "$6,968",
          "priceValue": 6968,
          "currency": "$"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "itemCount": 51,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Example Output (Rankings Only)

{
  "city": "New York City",
  "country": "United States",
  "rank": 1,
  "priceIndex": 243,
  "url": "https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/new-york-city",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use Cases

• Relocation planning: Compare living costs between cities before moving
• Salary benchmarking: Understand purchasing power differences across cities
• Remote work analysis: Find affordable cities to live in while working remotely
• Market research: Track cost of living trends for business decisions
• Academic research: Economic studies on global cost of living patterns
• Travel budgeting: Estimate daily expenses for different destinations

Tips

• The rankings page lists ~107 cities worldwide. Use maxListings: 0 to scrape all of them.
• City name matching is case-insensitive and accent-insensitive. "New York" will match "New York City".
• If no search queries match any cities, the scraper falls back to all ranked cities (up to maxListings).
• Proxy is recommended as Expatistan uses Cloudflare protection.
• Detail mode makes one additional request per city, so it's slower but provides much richer data.