About

About Travel City Index

A reference index for 200 cities, built on public data rather than opinion.

Travel City Index answers three questions for each city in the index: what a day there costs, what the government travel advisory says, and which months are worth going. Each answer is a figure from a named public dataset, or a figure computed from one with a formula we publish.

The rule

No number appears on a page without the dataset it came from appearing with it. The writing around the numbers is AI-assisted; the numbers are not. A model that cannot find a figure in the data is not allowed to supply one, and a draft that invents a price is rejected before it is published.

The methodology sets out every formula and constant. The source list names all 6 datasets and their licences.

What this is not

Not a booking site. There is nothing to buy here and no hotel, tour or restaurant is recommended.
Not a safety authority. The advisory levels are the US State Department's and the UK FCDO's; read them at the source before a trip depends on them.
Not a price quote. Daily costs are estimates derived from national price levels — useful for comparing cities, not for setting a budget to the dollar.

Corrections

Found a figure that looks wrong? That is the most useful message we can get. Tell us with the page URL and what looks off.