According to the Cost of Living 2025 index by Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database of statistics, living in Tallinn is more expensive than living in, for example, Tokyo, Barcelona or Rome.
In the 2025 index, the Estonian capital is ranked 138th with the cost of living index of 52.7 (New York City is 100 and the rest of the cities in the rankings are compared against it). The index ranks 327 cities all around the world.
According to the crowd-sourced index, it’s cheaper to live in Abu Dhabi (the cost of living index 52.6), Tokyo (51), Rome (51), Barcelona (50.6) or Taipei (47.8), compared with Tallinn.
Some of the bigger cities ranked below Tallinn are also Madrid (48.9), Prague (46.1), Lisbon (46.1), Bratislava (45.3), Warsaw (42.7) and Shanghai (39.3).
Riga, the capital of Latvia, is ranked 163rd with the cost of living index of 45.5, and the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, comes 165th with the index of 45.2.
The most expensive cities in the world, according to Numbeo, are the Swiss cities of Zürich (103.8), Lausanne (100.9) and Geneva (100.7). New York City ranks fourth (100), followed by Basel (98) and Bern (95), both again in Switzerland. San Francisco comes seventh, Honolulu eight, Reykjavik ninth and the top ten is completed by Boston.
The cost of living index indicates the relative prices of consumer goods like groceries, restaurants, transportation and utilities. It excludes accommodation expenses such as rent or mortgage. Rent index is listed separately.
Numbeo is a collaborative online database that enables users to share and compare statistical information about countries and cities. It is most-widely used to compare the cost of living between cities and countries. Its founder is an ex-Google software engineer.
