How we calculate the numbers

Updated October 2026

Earn Here, Spend There is a free app that tells travelers in 3 seconds whether a price is fair or a rip-off, across 502 cities. Here is exactly where every number comes from.

1. Reference prices

Each city has reference prices for about 20 everyday items — a local meal, coffee, a 5 km taxi, a 3-star hotel night and more. They start as estimates based on published cost-of-living levels. Once an item has 3 or more traveler reports, the median of what people actually paid is blended in. Using the median keeps one or two extreme reports from moving the number.

2. Fair range and rip-off line

Each item has its own spread: tight for things with near-fixed prices like transit, wide for things that vary shop to shop like street food. Anything more than 1.2× the top of the fair range is flagged as a likely rip-off.

Item	Fair range (× reference)	Rip-off line
Local mealper person	0.7× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Street food1 item	0.6× – 1.8×	2.2×+
Restaurant dinnerper person	0.7× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Coffeeone cup	0.6× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Beerone bottle	0.6× – 1.7×	2×+
Taxi5 km in town	0.8× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Transitone ride	0.9× – 1.3×	1.6×+
Tuk-tuk / moto taxishort hop	0.7× – 1.8×	2.2×+
Hotel night3-star	0.6× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Massage1 hour	0.7× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Laundry	0.7× – 1.6×	1.9×+
SIM card1 week data	0.7× – 1.7×	2×+
Half-day tourper person	0.7× – 1.6×	1.9×+
Entry ticketTourist town	0.8× – 1.4×	1.7×+
Bottled water	0.7× – 2×	2.4×+

Example: Bangkok 5 km taxi reference ฿115 → fair ฿92–฿184, rip-off warning above ฿221.

3. Daily budgets

Item prices are added up for three travel styles. Shoestring: guesthouse, street food, public transit. Mid-range: 3-star hotel, two local meals and a dinner out, two taxi rides, coffee and snacks. Comfort: 4-star hotel, two restaurant meals, taxis, a tour and a massage. Flights and shopping are excluded. Monthly costs use a local studio rent instead of hotel nights.

4. Felt value ("in your money")

An exchange-rate conversion doesn't tell you whether something is expensive for you. So the app compares each price with what the same item costs in your home city. If coffee here costs half of what it costs at home, money spent here feels half as heavy. You can also see prices as hours of your own pay.

5. Exchange rates

The app fetches current rates from a public exchange-rate API (open.er-api.com) each time it opens. The static pages on this site use the rates at build time, so they can differ slightly.

6. Limitations

Cities and items with few reports are estimates. Prices in the middle of tourist zones can differ a lot from neighborhood shops — which is why the app lets you add location, quantity and options, and shows real reports on a map.

7. Trip plans (multi-city)

When you add days per city we add up: lodging = one night at your chosen tier (hostel 0.55×, private room 1×, hotel 1.7×) × nights (no night on the last day; two people share a room), food = two local meals, a restaurant dinner and coffee × days × travelers, transport = two taxi rides a day (one per two people), sights = one paid entry a day (up to 10). The traveler premium (+25% for a typical traveler), spending style and card fee (3%) apply, and stays of 28+ days switch to month-stay costs. Flights are added only if you enter them.

Cities with 3 or more trip reports use the median daily spend of real travelers instead (the same travel style if it has 3+ reports) and the reports' average category split. Starting a trip saves the estimate, and your spending is compared with it city by city. A finished city's trip report is pre-filled from your log, so one check and tap turns it into the next traveler's estimate. You can also adjust a new plan by how much over or under plan you spent before.

Example: Tokyo → Kyoto → Osaka, 7 days, one person, mid-range = $1,346 (lodging $605 · food $391 · transport $278 · sights $71). Trip costs by itinerary ›

Citing and data

When citing, please credit "Earn Here, Spend There (earnherespendthere.com)" with the date. A one-line summary per city is at /llms-full.txt; full data is at /city-prices.json.