cityparity is a free, interactive relocation calculator that tells you the salary you'd need in a new city to keep your current standard of living. Unlike standard cost-of-living indexes, it factors in progressive taxes, childcare subsidies, healthcare costs, and government benefits to solve for true take-home pay equivalence. The tool provides transparent, source-cited breakdowns and pre-computed comparison guides for major international moves.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Standard cost-of-living calculators compare a basket of prices like rent and groceries, but they ignore the social safety net, progressive taxes, childcare subsidies, and healthcare costs that determine what a salary actually buys. This leads people to make relocation decisions based on a headline percentage that misses tens of thousands of dollars in annual differences, such as a US family spending $20,000 a year on healthcare where most of Europe pays near zero.
Solution
cityparity provides an interactive calculator that solves for the gross salary needed in a target city to match the net cash you keep in your home city. The engine computes take-home pay after progressive taxes and payroll contributions, subtracts living costs like childcare net of subsidy and healthcare, adds government benefits, and uses a bisection search to find the equivalent salary. Every line item cites its data source, and users can hover over formulas or flag corrections. The tool also offers pre-computed comparison guides for specific city pairs and roles, along with a paid Decision Pack that provides a break-even salary, sensitivity analysis, and a recruiter-ready ask range.
Target Audience
Primary users are professionals evaluating international job offers and families considering relocation across countries who need a realistic comparison of take-home pay and living standards.
Features
- Salary equivalence solved by bisection search, matching net cash in the target city's own currency rather than applying a currency conversion
- Full tax modeling with real progressive brackets, payroll contributions, municipal tax rates, and inbound expat tax regimes like the Dutch 30% ruling
- Detailed breakdown of childcare costs net of subsidies, healthcare premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and statutory vacation and parental leave valued in dollars
- Interactive weight sliders that produce a subjective 0-100 city score based on user-defined priorities
- Source-cited line items with hoverable formulas and a feedback mechanism to submit data corrections
- Pre-computed comparisons for major city pairs and roles, plus a blog covering expat tax regimes and cost-of-living calculator blind spots