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Cost of Living Scraper — Remote Work Score & Relocation Budget Tool

Compare real monthly costs, purchasing power, and a composite Remote Work Score across 100+ cities worldwide — built for digital nomads, remote teams, and anyone planning a relocation.

What does the Cost of Living Scraper do?

The Cost of Living Scraper collects live cost data for any city and converts it into three actionable numbers: your estimated monthly budget, your salary's equivalent purchasing power in that city, and a Remote Work Score out of 100 that factors in cost, internet, coworking density, and visa accessibility.

Unlike raw index dumps, this actor computes what the numbers actually mean for your lifestyle. Enter your salary and a list of cities, and get a side-by-side relocation comparison in one run.

Core capabilities:

• 🏙️ Scrape cost of living indices (Cost of Living, Rent, Groceries, Restaurant Price, Local Purchasing Power) for any city
• 💸 Calculate a monthly budget estimate tailored to a solo remote worker (rent + utilities + internet + food + gym)
• 📊 Compute Purchasing Power Index — how much further your money goes vs New York
• 🔄 Compute Salary Stretch Factor — e.g. "$80K in New York = $137,600 equivalent in Lisbon"
• 🌐 Generate a Remote Work Score (0–100) with four weighted components: cost, internet, coworking availability, and visa accessibility
• 🗂️ Output clean, structured JSON ready for spreadsheets, dashboards, or downstream automation

What data can you extract from city cost of living pages?

Can I use the Cost of Living Scraper to compare cities for remote work, relocation, or salary negotiation?

Yes. The Cost of Living Scraper is designed specifically for three use cases: planning a remote work relocation, comparing job offers in different cities, and building a geographic salary arbitrage strategy.

You provide your current salary and a list of cities. The actor scrapes live cost data for each, then computes how far your salary goes in purchasing power terms. A $80,000 salary in New York delivers the equivalent of $137,600 in Lisbon, $168,000 in Tbilisi, and $195,000 in Chiang Mai — the actor surfaces exactly that comparison.

The Remote Work Score goes further: it weights cost of living (40%), internet infrastructure (20%), coworking space density (20%), and visa accessibility for remote workers (20%) into a single 0–100 score per city.

How does the Cost of Living Scraper work?

The process:

1. You provide a list of cities and your reference annual salary (default: $80,000 USD)
2. The actor opens each city page with a full browser — the sites require JavaScript rendering
3. It extracts cost indices and individual price data points (rent, utilities, internet, food, gym)
4. It computes the monthly budget estimate: rent + utilities + internet + transport + (10 × meal) + groceries + gym
5. It calculates purchasing power vs New York as the hardcoded baseline: purchasingPowerIndex = (NY monthly cost / city monthly cost) × 100
6. It computes the Salary Stretch Factor: salaryStretchFactor = NY cost / city cost, then equivalentSalary = inputSalary × factor
7. It calculates the Remote Work Score using hardcoded coworking and visa accessibility scores combined with scraped cost and internet data
8. Results are pushed to a structured dataset — one row per city

Think of it like hiring a researcher to call every real estate agent and restaurant in 10 cities simultaneously, then putting the results in a spreadsheet for you.

Why use the Cost of Living Scraper instead of checking data manually?

The Cost of Living Scraper is the only actor on the Apify Store that combines live cost data with purchasing power calculations and a Remote Work Score in a single output row per city.

What can you do with cost of living data after scraping?

For digital nomads and remote workers:

• Build a personal relocation shortlist ranked by Remote Work Score
• Calculate the exact salary you'd need to maintain your current lifestyle in a new city
• Schedule monthly runs to track how costs shift in your target cities over time

For HR and compensation teams:

• Set location-adjusted salary bands using live cost data
• Model compensation equity across distributed team locations
• Run quarterly benchmark reports automatically

For data teams and developers:

• Feed the dataset into a salary calculator dashboard
• Combine with the EU Salary Calculator to model net-of-tax take-home across European cities
• Pipe results to Google Sheets via Apify's built-in integration for stakeholder reporting

Recommended schedule:

• Monthly for nomads tracking 3–5 target cities
• Quarterly for HR benchmarking across a distributed team
• Weekly if you're actively comparing cities before a move decision

How to use the Cost of Living Scraper?

1. Open the actor on the Apify Store and click Try for free
2. Create a free Apify account if you don't have one (takes 30 seconds)
3. Add your cities — type any English city name in the Cities field (e.g. "Lisbon", "Bali", "Buenos Aires")
4. Set your reference salary — enter your annual USD salary (default: 80,000)
5. Choose your currency — USD, EUR, or GBP for labelling
6. Click Start — the actor opens each city in a browser and extracts all data
7. Download results — export as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Output tab

Start with 5–10 cities per run for the fastest results. You can always add more cities and run again.

How much will it cost to run the Cost of Living Scraper?

The Cost of Living Scraper uses a browser (PlaywrightCrawler) because the city data pages require JavaScript to render. Browser-based actors consume more Apify platform credits than HTTP-only scrapers.

Estimated cost:

• 10 cities ≈ 1–3 minutes of browser time ≈ under $0.05 per run on a Free plan
• 50 cities ≈ 5–12 minutes ≈ under $0.25 per run
• Daily schedule for 10 cities ≈ ~$1.50/month

Cost optimisation tips:

• Use maxConcurrency: 3 (default) — runs 3 cities simultaneously to reduce total time
• Don't increase concurrency above 5 — higher values can trigger rate limiting
• Schedule runs at off-peak hours for better proxy availability
• Use the Free plan ($5 free credit/month) for up to 100 city pages per month

See the Apify pricing page for full details.

⬇️ Input

The Cost of Living Scraper accepts four input parameters:

Example input — digital nomad shortlist:

{
"cities":["Lisbon","Berlin","Bangkok","Tbilisi","Medellin"],
"referenceSalary":80000,
"referenceCurrency":"USD",
"maxConcurrency":3
}

Example input — EU salary benchmarking:

{
"cities":["Amsterdam","Berlin","Lisbon","Warsaw","Prague","Budapest"],
"referenceSalary":95000,
"referenceCurrency":"EUR",
"maxConcurrency":3
}

City name tips:

• Use standard English names: "Medellin" not "Medellín", "New York" not "NYC"
• For Bali, use "Bali" (maps to Denpasar data)
• For Buenos Aires, use the full name with a space

⬆️ Output

One JSON object per city is saved to the default dataset. All cost fields are in USD.

Example output row:

{
"city":"Lisbon",
"country":"Portugal",
"costOfLivingIndex":48.2,
"rentIndex":32.1,
"groceriesIndex":38.5,
"restaurantPriceIndex":41.2,
"localPurchasingPowerIndex":52.8,
"monthlyBudgetEstimate":1850,
"currency":"USD",
"rent1BdrmCentre":1100,
"rent1BdrmOutside":780,
"monthlyUtilities":95,
"internet":28,
"transportPass":40,
"restaurantMeal":12,
"restaurantMidRange":55,
"coffee":1.8,
"groceriesMonthly":280,
"gymMonthly":35,
"purchasingPowerIndex":172,
"salaryStretchFactor":1.72,
"equivalentSalary":137600,
"remoteWorkScore":82,
"remoteWorkScoreBreakdown":{
"costOfLiving":38,
"internet":18,
"coworkingAvailability":17,
"visaAccessibility":18
},
"scrapedAt":"2026-03-27T10:00:00.000Z",
"sourceUrl":"https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Lisbon"
}

Export formats: JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS — available from the Output tab or via the Apify API.

Are there other tools in the Apify Store for salary, relocation, and e-commerce research?

The Cost of Living Scraper is part of a suite of decision-support actors:

• 💼 Freelancer Rate Calculator — Calculate market-rate day rates for freelancers by skill, location, and experience
• 🇪🇺 EU Salary Calculator — Net take-home pay after taxes and social security across all 27 EU countries
• 🏢 Coworking Space Scraper — Find and compare coworking spaces in any city with pricing, amenities, and ratings
• 📣 Influencer Pricing Calculator — Estimate fair influencer rates by follower count, engagement, and platform

Combine Cost of Living Scraper + EU Salary Calculator to model both your gross-to-net salary AND your monthly expenses in the same city — the complete financial picture for a relocation decision.

Frequently asked questions

Can I compare more than 10 cities at once? Yes. The cities input accepts any number of city names. For large lists (50+ cities), increase maxConcurrency to 5 and expect a longer run time. Runs are billed by usage, so large lists cost proportionally more.

How many cities can I scrape per run? There is no hard limit. Most users run 5–20 cities per run. The actor has been tested with lists of 50+ cities. Performance depends on your Apify plan's memory and concurrency allocation.

How fresh is the cost of living data? The actor scrapes live data on each run — not cached reports. Schedule daily or weekly runs to track cost trends over time. City cost data typically updates monthly on the source.

Can I use the Cost of Living Scraper with the Apify API? Yes. Every actor on Apify is accessible via the REST API. You can trigger runs, pass input, and retrieve output programmatically:

curl-X POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trovevault~cost-of-living-scraper/runs \
-H"Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"\
-H"Content-Type: application/json"\
-d'{"cities": ["Lisbon", "Berlin"], "referenceSalary": 80000}'

Can I use the Cost of Living Scraper through an MCP Server? Yes. Apify's MCP (Model Context Protocol) server exposes all actors as tools for AI agents. You can call the Cost of Living Scraper from Claude, GPT-4, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant. Connect via https://mcp.apify.com and use your Apify token. This lets AI assistants run live city comparisons on demand during a conversation.

How is the Remote Work Score calculated? The Remote Work Score is a composite 0–100 score: cost of living (40% weight, lower cost = higher score), internet infrastructure (20% weight, using internet cost as a proxy), coworking space density (20% weight, hardcoded scores for top 50 cities), and visa accessibility (20% weight, based on published digital nomad visa programs). The score is city-specific, not country-specific.

What is the Purchasing Power Index? The Purchasing Power Index measures how far your money goes in a target city compared to New York (baseline = 100). An index of 172 for Lisbon means your purchasing power is 72% higher than in New York — $80,000 effectively becomes $137,600 in lifestyle terms.

Can I get historical cost of living data? The actor scrapes current data on each run. To build a historical dataset, schedule the actor to run weekly or monthly and accumulate results. Each row includes a scrapedAt timestamp for time-series analysis.

Is scraping cost of living data legal? Scraping publicly available cost data for personal or commercial use is generally permitted. The data extracted by this actor is publicly visible without a login — anyone can view city cost pages in a browser. You are responsible for complying with the terms of service of any website you scrape, and with applicable data protection laws in your jurisdiction. This actor does not scrape personal data, login-protected content, or paywalled information.

What if the actor fails to extract data for a specific city? If a city name is misspelled or does not have a dedicated page, the actor logs a warning and continues with the remaining cities. Use standard English city names. For cities without complete index data, the actor still returns partial data and computes estimates from available price points.

Your feedback

Found a bug, missing a city, or want a new feature? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab in the Apify Console. Response time is typically under 48 hours.