According to the Cost of Living 2026 index by Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database of statistics, living in Tallinn is more expensive than living in cities such as Dubai, Rome or Montreal.
In the 2026 index, the Estonian capital is ranked 182nd (up from 138th in 2025), with a cost of living index score of 64.8 (52.7 in 2025). New York City is used as the benchmark at 100, with all other cities compared against it. The index covers 479 cities worldwide, up from 327 in 2025.
According to the crowd-sourced data, it is cheaper to live in Dubai, Rome, Montreal, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Taipei, Prague, Wellington, Budapest and Istanbul, among others, than in Tallinn.
Riga, the capital of Latvia, is ranked 244th with a cost of living index of 54.9, while Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, is ranked 260th (53.0).
Switzerland the most expensive
The cities with the highest cost of living, according to the index, are all located in Switzerland: Zürich, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne, Lugano and Bern occupy the top six positions. New York City is ranked seventh, followed by Reykjavik in eighth place, Honolulu in ninth and San Francisco in tenth.
At the opposite end of the index, the cities with the lowest cost of living are all in India. The world’s cheapest city is Coimbatore, followed by Lucknow, Indore, Surat, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Bhopal, Patna and Bhubaneswar.
The cost of living index reflects relative prices for consumer goods and services such as groceries, restaurants, transport and utilities. Housing costs, including rent and mortgages, are excluded and measured separately in the rent index.
Numbeo is a collaborative online database that allows users to share and compare statistical data on countries and cities worldwide. It is most widely used to compare cost of living levels between locations and was founded by a former Google software engineer.
