Compare countries and cities

Yes. The full comparison tool — 16 deep-dive modules, 380 cities, 95 countries, school market data, decision confidence analysis, all of it — is free with no signup required. We sell optional plans ($29 Relocation Decision Plan, $49 Family School Shortlist Plan, $79 Tax/Relocation Risk Packet) for users who want a personalized recommendation, but the comparison itself is open.

institutional public-domain datasets: World Bank, WHO, OECD, UNDP, IMF, Eurostat, Open-Meteo, the WhereNext schools database (4,149 schools), and 18 more. Every row carries a confidence chip showing whether it's flagship-tier (verified first-party data), researched (curated from official sources), or modeled (extrapolated from country averages). Nothing is hidden.

Yes. You can compare two cities (Lisbon vs Coimbra), two countries (Portugal vs Spain), or any mix (Lisbon vs Spain). Country-level rows like tax and visa show one entry per unique country; city-level rows like schools and housing render side-by-side per target. The decision confidence analysis warns you when you're comparing a flagship-tier city to a modeled one.

Numbeo is crowd-sourced cost-of-living data only — useful but limited to one dimension. Expat forums are anecdotal. WhereNext aggregates institutional public-domain datasets across 16 modules (cost, taxes, visas, schools, healthcare, safety, housing, climate, infrastructure, work culture, and more), shows you confidence tiers per data point, and routes the result into a personalized brief if you want to go deeper.

Up to 5 simultaneously. Most users compare 2-3 since the visual hierarchy is sharper. You can mix countries and cities freely. The tool deduplicates country-level rows automatically when you add two cities in the same country.

No. WhereNext uses first-party analytics only (no third-party tracking pixels), no advertising, no data sales. Cookies are limited to essential session state. You can use the entire compare tool without an account.

We have 380 cities and 95 countries covered. If your destination is among them, it'll have at least country-level data. Cities marked as 'flagship' tier ship live first-party data — schools, housing, neighborhoods, the works. If a city doesn't appear in the search, you can compare at the country level as a fallback.

Yes. The live tool supports URL sharing (the comparison state is encoded in the URL — just copy/paste), a public share link with snapshot, and a Markdown export for the side-by-side table. Premium briefs (Decision / School Fit / Tax) include a printable PDF.