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Data Sources

Every dataset that feeds WhereNext’s composite country and city rankings, calculators, and reports. We deliberately use official and institutional sources so readers can inspect each claim and its source terms. Our published datasets have their own CC BY 4.0 license.

Official and institutional sources

Loaded directly from publishing agencies. License, cadence, and primary URL listed for each.

International Comparison Program 2021

World Bank

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Update cadence: Released roughly every 3 years (next: ICP 2024)
Coverage: 176 economies including all 95 covered by WhereNext
Powers on WhereNext: Cost of Living Index 2026, Cost of Living Calculator, Salary Calculator (PPP), Budget Builder, Country rankings and city cost anchors

Price Level Indices for Actual Individual Consumption + food, housing/utilities, and transport sub-categories. Anchors WhereNext's cost_index with US = 82, world = 100.

Primary source →

Human Development Index 2024 Report (2023 data)

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

License: Public access (UNDP terms of use)
Update cadence: Annual
Coverage: 193 countries
Powers on WhereNext: Country composite cross-validation, education sub-index, infrastructure proxy, confidence scoring

Primary source →

Global Peace Index 2026

Institute for Economics and Peace

License: Public access (IEP citation requirements)
Update cadence: Annual
Coverage: 163 countries
Powers on WhereNext: Country safety_index, /rankings/safest-countries, persona scoring for retirees and families

Primary source →

OECD PISA 2025

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

License: OECD Terms and Conditions (free for non-commercial use; attribution required)
Update cadence: Triennial to date (next cycle: PISA 2029)
Coverage: 91 countries and economies (all 38 OECD members)
Powers on WhereNext: Country education_index, school-vertical scoring, family persona ranking

Primary source →

EF English Proficiency Index 2024

EF Education First

License: Free with attribution
Update cadence: Annual
Coverage: 113 countries
Powers on WhereNext: Lifestyle dimension (English-proficiency component, ~15% weight), language_access_index

Primary source →

Eurostat — Comparative Price Levels, Life Satisfaction, Crime

European Commission (Eurostat)

License: Free re-use with attribution
Update cadence: Annual to quarterly depending on dataset
Coverage: EU-27 + EEA (~33 countries)
Powers on WhereNext: EU-block cost sub-indices (food/housing/utilities/transport), life-satisfaction (lifestyle), crime statistics (safety)

592 metric snapshots cached weekly in our location_metric_snapshots table for the 36 EU/EEA countries.

Primary source →

Global Health Observatory (GHO)

World Health Organization (WHO)

License: WHO open-data policy (attribution required)
Update cadence: Annual
Coverage: 194 member states
Powers on WhereNext: Healthcare data sourcing — UHC service coverage index (UHC_INDEX_REPORTED), physician density (HWF_0001), nursing density (HWF_0006)

WHO GHO is wired through the live data-source adapter at /api/data; results blend with WhereNext-researched healthcare cost data.

Primary source →

World Bank Open Data — Internet Use & Fixed Broadband

World Bank

License: CC BY 4.0
Update cadence: Annual
Coverage: 200+ economies
Powers on WhereNext: Infrastructure dimension — internet users % of population (IT.NET.USER.ZS, 60%) + fixed-broadband subscriptions per 100 (IT.NET.BBND.P2, 40%)

Primary source →

Open-Meteo Climate API

Open-Meteo (open-source weather API)

License: CC BY 4.0
Update cadence: Live (cached 12 hours)
Coverage: Worldwide
Powers on WhereNext: Climate comfort score, air quality (PM2.5), city-level seasonality data

Primary source →

REST Countries

REST Countries (open-source)

License: MIT
Update cadence: Live
Coverage: 250+ countries
Powers on WhereNext: Country metadata: ISO codes, currencies, regions, languages, population

Primary source →

WhereNext-researched data layers

Datasets we built ourselves by aggregating from official primary sources. Cross-verified, source-cited, and confidence-tagged.

International School Catalogue

WhereNext Research (compiled from published school fees and public listings)

License: Proprietary catalogue / underlying school websites are publicly accessible
Update cadence: Continuous (per-school re-verification on a rolling basis)
Coverage: 4,149 schools across 342 cities and 78 countries
Powers on WhereNext: International School Costs 2026, true-annual-cost ranking, hidden-fee analysis, admissions-openness scoring

Primary source →

Golden Visa Programmes

WhereNext Research (cross-verified against AIMA, Residency Malta, MISE, USCIS, Singapore EDB, Dubai ICP)

License: CC BY 4.0
Update cadence: Rolling (rows re-verified every 30–120 days)
Coverage: 28 active residency- and citizenship-by-investment programmes
Powers on WhereNext: Golden Visa Index 2026, Golden Visa Finder, Cost Calculator, ROI Calculator

Primary source →

Digital Nomad Visa Programmes

WhereNext Research (cross-verified against issuing-country immigration ministries)

License: CC BY 4.0
Update cadence: Rolling (registry-stamped per update)
Coverage: 43 country records
Powers on WhereNext: Digital Nomad Visas 2026 dataset, /digital-nomad-visas hub, country pages

Primary source →

Healthcare Cost Database

WhereNext Research (cross-referenced against OECD Health Statistics + national health ministries)

License: Internal — outputs are CC BY 4.0
Update cadence: Updated as source data changes
Coverage: 49 countries (researched, estimated, and modeled tiers, labeled per row)
Powers on WhereNext: Healthcare Cost Calculator, country/city healthcare profiles, /rankings/best-healthcare, Tax/Relocation Risk Packet

Primary source →

Tax Rate Database (income tax, social, VAT, special regimes)

WhereNext Research, cross-verified against PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries (taxsummaries.pwc.com) and the OECD Tax Database

License: Internal curation — outputs are CC BY 4.0; the PwC and OECD source pages are publicly accessible
Update cadence: Annual (PwC territory pages deterministically updated 2026-05-30)
Coverage: 101 countries; 96 carry a per-country PwC 'Individual — Taxes on personal income' source URL (verified via PwC's sitemap + page <title>), the remainder cite OECD/government publications
Powers on WhereNext: Tax Comparison tool, Expat Tax Rates 2026 dataset, Tax Brief ($79), country-page tax sections

Primary source →

Source-approval policy

New data sources are added only when they meet all four criteria:

Primary source — must be the publishing agency, not a re-aggregator.
License compatibility — must permit redistribution and attribution-based reuse. Crowd-sourced or paywalled datasets are not eligible.
Coverage — must cover at least 30 of WhereNext’s 95 indexed countries (with modeled fallback acceptable for the remainder).
Methodology transparency — the publisher must document its own methodology, sample sizes, and update cadence.

Citing this page

All WhereNext composite scores and datasets are CC BY 4.0. Suggested citation:

WhereNext (2026). Data Sources.
Retrieved from https://getwherenext.com/sources.
CC BY 4.0.

See also /methodology for how these sources combine into composite scores, and /editorial-standards for our correction and retraction policy.