💸 Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper

🚀 Export Numbeo cost-of-living indices for 500+ cities worldwide in seconds. Pull rent, groceries, restaurant prices, and purchasing power into CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML. No API key, no registration, no manual copy-paste.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-21 · 📊 12 fields per record · 🏙 500+ cities · 🌍 100+ countries · 📈 6 cost indices

The Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper exports the world's largest user-contributed cost-of-living database and returns 12 fields per city record, including cost-of-living index, rent index, groceries index, restaurant price index, local purchasing power index, contributor count, and last update date. Numbeo is the most cited cost-of-living reference on the web, used by economists, expats, HR teams, and relocation services worldwide.

The dataset covers 500+ cities across 100+ countries, from major global hubs like New York, Tokyo, and London down to regional cities. This Actor makes that data downloadable in seconds. All processing runs server-side, so you skip the parser engineering entirely.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
HR/comp teams, relocation consultants, expats, travel-tech teams, economists, data journalists, real estate analysts	Salary benchmarking, relocation packages, cost comparisons, expat planning, city ranking dashboards

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📋 What the Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper does

Five workflows in a single run:

• 🌍 Worldwide export. Every city Numbeo tracks, ranked by cost of living index.
• 🏳️ Country filter. Restrict to one country like Germany, Japan, United States, or Brazil.
• 📊 Index breakdown. Six separate indices per city - cost of living, rent, groceries, restaurant prices, combined, and purchasing power.
• 👥 Contributor metadata. Know how many data contributors back each city's estimates.
• 📅 Freshness tracking. lastUpdated and scrapedAt timestamps on every record.

Each record includes the city name, country, six economic indices, contributor count, last update date, a direct link to the Numbeo city page, and a scrape timestamp.

💡 Why it matters: building a global cost-of-living comparison tool means writing parsers, handling table updates, and refreshing by hand every month. This Actor automates that entirely and returns clean structured data on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
country	string	""	Filter by country name (e.g. "Germany", "United States", "Japan"). Leave empty for all cities worldwide.
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.

Example: top 50 most expensive cities worldwide.

{
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example: all cities in Germany.

{
    "country": "Germany",
    "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Numbeo indices are relative to New York City (baseline = 100). A cost-of-living index of 60 means that city is approximately 40% cheaper than NYC. Indices are community-contributed and reflect the past 12 months of user submissions. Cities with fewer than 10 contributors may have higher variance.

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📊 Output

Each record in the dataset contains these fields:

Field	Type	Description
🏙 city	string	City name
🌍 country	string	Country name
💸 costOfLivingIndex	number	Cost of living index (NYC = 100 baseline)
🏠 rentIndex	number	Rent index (NYC = 100 baseline)
🧮 costOfLivingPlusRentIndex	number	Combined cost of living and rent index
🛒 groceriesIndex	number	Groceries index (NYC = 100 baseline)
🍽 restaurantPriceIndex	number	Restaurant price index (NYC = 100 baseline)
💰 localPurchasingPowerIndex	number	Local purchasing power index (NYC = 100 baseline)
👥 contributors	number	Number of Numbeo contributors in past 12 months
📅 lastUpdated	string	Date of most recent data update on Numbeo
🔗 url	string	Direct URL to the Numbeo city page
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when this record was scraped

Sample records (real data from cloud run, 2026-05-21):

[
  {
    "city": "Zurich",
    "country": "Switzerland",
    "costOfLivingIndex": 122,
    "rentIndex": 74.2,
    "costOfLivingPlusRentIndex": 100.3,
    "groceriesIndex": 122.3,
    "restaurantPriceIndex": 124.1,
    "localPurchasingPowerIndex": 173.1,
    "contributors": 182,
    "lastUpdated": "19 May 2026",
    "url": "https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Zurich",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-21T22:41:30.652Z"
  },
  {
    "city": "Geneva",
    "country": "Switzerland",
    "costOfLivingIndex": 114.4,
    "rentIndex": 64.4,
    "costOfLivingPlusRentIndex": 91.6,
    "groceriesIndex": 109.8,
    "restaurantPriceIndex": 123.2,
    "localPurchasingPowerIndex": 168.5,
    "contributors": 78,
    "lastUpdated": "19 May 2026",
    "url": "https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Geneva",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-21T22:41:30.652Z"
  },
  {
    "city": "Munich",
    "country": "Germany",
    "costOfLivingIndex": 76.3,
    "rentIndex": 39.8,
    "costOfLivingPlusRentIndex": 59.7,
    "groceriesIndex": 65.9,
    "restaurantPriceIndex": 76.3,
    "localPurchasingPowerIndex": 151.7,
    "contributors": 268,
    "lastUpdated": "21 May 2026",
    "url": "https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Munich",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-21T22:41:30.652Z"
  }
]

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✨ Why choose this Actor

Feature	Detail
🌍 Global coverage	500+ cities across 100+ countries in one run
📊 6 indices per city	Cost of living, rent, groceries, restaurant, combined, purchasing power
👥 Contributor metadata	Know the data quality behind each city estimate
📅 Freshness tracking	lastUpdated per city, scrapedAt per run
🏳️ Country filter	Narrow to any country by name
🚀 Fast execution	Full worldwide run completes in under 5 minutes
📦 4 export formats	CSV, Excel, JSON, XML out of the box via Apify dataset

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

	Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper	Manual CSV download	Custom scraper
Setup time	Under 2 minutes	5 minutes per export	Days of engineering
Structured fields	12 per city	Manual parsing required	Manual parsing required
Country filter	Built-in	No filter	Custom code
Export formats	CSV, Excel, JSON, XML	CSV only	Custom
Automation	Scheduled runs via Apify	Manual	Custom scheduler
Maintenance	Zero	Zero	Ongoing

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🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account with $5 credit (no credit card required)
2. Open the Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper in the Apify Store
3. Set country to filter by country (optional), set maxItems for how many cities to export
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish (typically under 2 minutes)
5. Download your dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab

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💼 Business use cases

💼 HR and Compensation Teams

Build location-adjusted salary benchmarks by pulling cost-of-living and purchasing power indices for cities where you have offices or remote employees. A Munich employee needs different compensation than a Zurich employee - this data tells you exactly how much.

🌍 Relocation and Expat Services

Generate city comparison reports for clients considering international moves. Filter by destination country, export the full cost breakdown, and deliver structured data to your comparison tools or recommendation engines.

📊 Real Estate and Investment Research

Overlay Numbeo rent indices with property price data to identify undervalued rental markets. Cities with high purchasing power but low rent index represent strong investment candidates.

📰 Data Journalism and Research

Power cost-of-living comparison articles, interactive maps, and economic research with regularly refreshed structured data. Schedule the Actor to run monthly and feed the results directly into your visualization pipeline.

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🔌 Automating Numbeo Cost of Living Scraper

Connect this Actor to your existing tools using Apify's built-in integrations:

• Make (Integromat): Trigger a run on a schedule and push results to Google Sheets, Airtable, or a database automatically.
• Zapier: Connect Apify to 5,000+ apps - send new city records to Slack, Notion, or CRMs.
• Webhooks: Get notified when a run finishes and pipe data into your own systems.
• Apify API: Call the Actor programmatically and integrate results into any backend or data pipeline.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

🔬 Academic Research

Economists and urban planners use Numbeo indices to study cost-of-living divergence, real wage trends, and regional inequality. Automate regular data pulls to track how cities evolve over time.

🎒 Digital Nomad Planning

Build a personal city ranking tool that weights rent index, restaurant prices, and purchasing power against your income. Export to a spreadsheet and filter to find your next base.

🗺 Non-Profit and NGO Work

Organizations working on poverty measurement, development economics, or migrant support can use purchasing power and cost data to understand relative living standards across cities.

🧪 Experimentation and Side Projects

Build a cost-of-living calculator, power a chatbot that answers "how much does it cost to live in X vs Y", or feed an LLM with fresh structured economic data - without writing any scrapers.

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Not sure if this Actor fits your use case? Paste this into any AI assistant:

"I have access to an Apify Actor that scrapes Numbeo cost-of-living data. It returns city, country, costOfLivingIndex, rentIndex, groceriesIndex, restaurantPriceIndex, localPurchasingPowerIndex, contributors, lastUpdated, and url for 500+ cities worldwide, with optional country filtering. How could I use this data to [describe your project]?"

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🤔 What is a Numbeo cost-of-living index?

Numbeo indices are relative to New York City (NYC = 100). A city with costOfLivingIndex of 60 is approximately 40% cheaper than NYC for everyday goods and services, excluding rent.

🏠 What does the rent index cover?

The rent index reflects average apartment rental prices in the city center and outside the center. A rentIndex of 50 means rent is approximately 50% of equivalent NYC rent.

🌍 How many cities are covered?

The worldwide rankings page lists 500+ cities. When filtering by country, coverage depends on how many cities Numbeo has active data for in that country - Germany has 32, the United States has 100+.

🔄 How fresh is the data?

Each record includes a lastUpdated field showing the date of the most recent Numbeo update for that city, and a scrapedAt timestamp for when this Actor scraped the data.

👥 What does the contributors field mean?

This is the number of unique Numbeo users who submitted price data for that city in the past 12 months. Higher contributor counts generally mean more accurate indices. Cities with fewer than 10 contributors may have higher variance.

💱 Are prices in USD?

Numbeo indices are dimensionless numbers relative to New York City. They are not prices in any currency. To convert to an approximate price in your local currency, apply the index to known NYC price benchmarks.

🔍 Can I filter by city name?

The Actor filters by country. To target a specific city, set maxItems: 1 and country to the city's country, then filter the output by city name in your downstream tool.

📅 How often should I run this?

Numbeo data updates continuously as contributors submit new prices. For most use cases, a monthly scheduled run captures meaningful changes. For research requiring high freshness, weekly runs are reasonable.

💰 Is there a free tier?

Free plan users receive up to 10 city records per run. Upgrade to a paid plan to export up to 1,000,000 records.

🛠 What happens if Numbeo changes their table structure?

The Actor uses the #t2 DataTables element and country_result.jsp endpoint which have been stable for years. If the structure changes, open an issue and we will update the Actor promptly.

🌐 Does this require an API key or Numbeo account?

No. All data is publicly available on Numbeo without login. No API key or registration is required.

📦 What export formats are available?

The Apify platform supports CSV, Excel (XLSX), JSON, XML, and RSS export from any dataset - select your format on the dataset download page.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

This Actor works with any app that connects to Apify:

Productivity: Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Coda Automation: Make, Zapier, n8n, Pipedream Data: BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB Storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Azure Blob Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord webhooks BI: Tableau, Power BI, Metabase, Looker Studio

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Disclaimer: This Actor scrapes publicly available data from Numbeo (numbeo.com). Use of this data is subject to Numbeo's terms of service. ParseForge is not affiliated with or endorsed by Numbeo. All indices are community-contributed estimates and should not be used as the sole basis for financial or legal decisions. Verify critical data points against primary sources.