About City Cost UK

What City Cost UK does

City Cost UK turns a UK salary into a clear picture of what life actually costs in any given city. Most online “salary calculators” stop at take-home pay and leave you to guess what that means in practice. We pick up where they stop.

Our tools let you:

• Estimate your UK take-home pay using current tax and National Insurance rules.
• See the typical monthly cost of living in over 30 UK cities, broken down into rent, bills, transport, food and lifestyle.
• Compare any two cities side by side to understand where your salary stretches further.
• Work out the salary you would need to live comfortably in a given city, and find jobs that match that target.
• Read in-depth, regularly updated guides for each city we cover.

Our purpose

Decisions about where to live and work are some of the biggest financial choices most people ever make — yet the information needed to make them well is scattered, outdated or hidden behind paywalls.

We built City Cost UK to fix that. Our purpose is to make UK affordability data transparent, comparable and free so that anyone — not just people with a financial adviser — can make informed decisions about their salary, their city and their cost of living.

We’re guided by three principles:

• Honesty. If a number is an estimate, we say so. If a city’s data has wider variance, we flag it. We don’t dress up uncertainty.
• Independence. We are not affiliated with any employer, lender, estate agent or recruitment platform. The calculator is, and will remain, free to use.
• Transparency. Our methodology is published in full on the methodology page so you can see exactly how we calculate every figure.

Who City Cost UK helps

People use City Cost UK for very different reasons. The most common are:

• Job seekers and career changers weighing up an offer in a new city or negotiating a salary that actually covers local costs.
• Graduates and early-career professionals trying to understand whether a starting salary is realistic for the city they’re moving to.
• People considering relocating within the UK, for family, lifestyle or remote-work reasons.
• Renters and prospective home-buyers sense-checking how much of their take-home pay would go on housing.
• International professionals and returning expats getting a feel for the UK cost of living before moving.
• Researchers, journalists and curious readers looking for clear, sourced cost-of-living comparisons.

How we make money

City Cost UK is supported by display advertising (including Google AdSense) and, in a small number of clearly labelled places, by affiliate links. Advertising revenue is what allows us to keep the calculator and all our city guides free for everyone, with no paywall.

Advertisers do not influence our data, our rankings or our editorial guides. Our methodology is the same regardless of who is advertising on the page.

What we are not

City Cost UK is not a financial adviser, a recruiter, a letting agent, a mortgage broker or a price-comparison site. We do not recommend specific products and we do not provide regulated advice. For decisions that affect your finances or your housing, please speak to a qualified professional who can review your full circumstances.

Get in touch

Found a bug, spotted a figure that looks off, want to suggest a city or partner with us? We’d love to hear from you via the contact page.