Best Value: Income vs Cost of Living

How to read this ranking

Each figure is a comparative price level: what a standardised basket of goods and services costs locally, with the EU-27 average normalised to 100. Because it is purchasing-power-comparable, it strips out exchange-rate distortion and lets you compare countries directly. The spread from Switzerland (29429) to Romania (10000) is 19429 index points — a large real difference in everyday costs. For affordability, weigh this against the best-value ranking, which combines income and cost.

The mid-table country, Cyprus (19886), is a useful reference: countries above it score higher than typical, those below lower. A country can rank well on one category and poorly on another — cheap groceries do not guarantee cheap rent. Open any country profile for the full per-category breakdown.