World’s Best and Worst Value Countries

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Both axes are percentile ranks across all 203 cities we have cost and quality data for, so the quadrants split the set evenly — raw cost runs from $4 to $56,120/month across the full database, which no linear axis can show. Cost is the nomad cost — the same monthly figure a city page shows by default, for a short-to-medium stay. Quality of life is Nomads.com’s own life_score: 23 weighted parts including human development, air quality, safety, healthcare, education, peace and temperature. About 1% of that score’s weight is cost itself, so the two axes are very slightly related by construction. Every country with both a quality score and a nomad cost is on the chart and findable by search; only as many names are drawn as fit without overlapping, most-looked-at first, and zooming in reveals the rest. Middle East is folded into Asia: seven distinct hues cannot be told apart reliably, including by readers with colour blindness.

Original idea and design by Valerii Emelianov, rebuilt here on Nomads.com data.