About WhereNext
WhereNext is an open relocation decision platform. We build composite country and city scores from public-domain institutional datasets, publish them as CC BY 4.0 open data, and pair them with free interactive tools so anyone can plan a move with the same primary sources used by economists, journalists, and immigration researchers.
What we do
- Composite scoring— 95 countries scored across 7 quality-of-life dimensions: cost, safety, healthcare, education, career, lifestyle, infrastructure. Same data, user-weighted rankings.
- City coverage— 380 cities with cost breakdowns; 71 flagship cities with deeply researched neighborhood, schools, and lifestyle data.
- School data— 4,149 international and IB schools across 342 cities, with hidden-fee analysis and admissions-openness scores.
- Open datasets— 7 published CC BY 4.0 datasets with JSON + CSV exports: Global Relocation Index 2026, Cost of Living Index 2026, Expat Tax Rates 2026, Digital Nomad Visas 2026, International School Costs 2026, Golden Visa Index 2026, Chinese Outbound Relocation Index 2026.
- Free decision tools— 24 calculators including FIRE, salary purchasing-power, expat tax (FEIE/FTC), buy-vs-rent, healthcare cost, day simulator, dual-life optimizer.
Why public-domain data
Most relocation comparison sites rely on paywalled datasets or crowd-sourced surveys. We deliberately chose public-domain institutional sources so every claim can be independently verified and every dataset can be redistributed freely. Our scoring inputs are:
- World Bank International Comparison Program 2021— Price Level Indices for Actual Individual Consumption plus food, housing, utilities, and transport sub-categories. Covers all 95 countries.
- UNDP Human Development Index— composite score combining health, education, and income components for cross-validation.
- IEP Global Peace Index 2024— 24 indicators across 5 domains for the safety score.
- OECD PISA 2022— international student assessment scores (reading, math, science) for the education score.
- EF English Proficiency Index 2024— 113-country English proficiency for the lifestyle score.
- Eurostat— comparative price level indices, life satisfaction, and crime statistics for the EU-27 + EEA bloc.
- Open-Meteo— climate comfort and air quality.
- WhereNext-researched layers— healthcare cost data (44 researched countries), international school catalogue, golden visa programmes, digital-nomad visa programmes. Every research entry is source-cited and confidence-tagged.
How we work
- Confidence-tagged— every metric carries a confidence score (0-1) reflecting data coverage. Where direct institutional data is unavailable, heuristic models and proxy estimates fill gaps; the confidence score reflects this.
- Updated quarterly— composite indices are refreshed each quarter; CC BY 4.0 dataset versions follow the upstream institutional release cadence (annual for HDI/EPI; triennial for PISA; one-off for ICP 2021 until ICP 2024 publishes).
- Open changelog — every methodology change is logged on the methodology page with the version number and the dimensions it affects.
- Editorial standards— corrections, retraction policy, and source-approval rules are published at /editorial-standards.
- No conflicts of interest— WhereNext is independent. We are not a relocation consultancy, broker, law firm, or mortgage originator. We do not accept payment for inclusion or ranking. A small number of clearly disclosed affiliate links (insurance, banking) defray infrastructure costs and never influence scoring.
Citing WhereNext
All WhereNext composite scores and datasets are licensed CC BY 4.0. Suggested citation:
WhereNext (2026). Global Relocation Index 2026. Retrieved from https://getwherenext.com/data/global-relocation-index-2026. CC BY 4.0.
For a full inventory of every dataset, see /sources. For methodology detail, see /methodology. Contact: hello@getwherenext.com.