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Where an average salary goes furthest (2026)
Not the cheapest cities — the ones where local pay has kept up with local costs. The average wage, after tax, measured against what living there actually costs.
New York ranks last of 68 cities: its average wage after tax buys 628 units of living costs per index point, against 1,974 in Valparaiso. The ranking divides each country's OECD average annual wage (PPP), after income tax and employee social security, by the city's cost-of-living index where New York = 100.
Why this list matters
The cheap-city lists answer the wrong question for anyone who will earn locally. A low cost of living is worth nothing if local pay fell further than local prices, which is the situation in a good number of the places those lists recommend.
What this exposes is decoupling. Where a city's costs have run ahead of its country's wages, the average earner loses ground: New York, London, Dublin and Lisbon all sit in the bottom ten. Where they have not — Osaka, Gothenburg, Montreal, Busan — an ordinary salary still reaches.
For each city: the country's OECD average annual wage (PPP, single filer with no children), minus that country's effective income tax and employee social security, divided by the city's cost-of-living index (New York = 100). A higher number means the average wage stretches further. Only the 68 cities whose country publishes an OECD average wage are ranked — mixing that with World Bank income-per-capita, which counts a whole population's income from all sources rather than employees' pay, would rank the measure instead of the economy.
| # | City | Net wage per cost point | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Valparaisoest.Chile | 1,974 | Chile |
| 2 |  OsakaJapan | 1,532 | Japan |
| 3 | SantiagoChile | 1,504 | Chile |
| 4 |  BogotaColombia | 1,474 | Colombia |
| 5 |  GothenburgSweden | 1,437 | Sweden |
| 6 |  BusanSouth Korea | 1,377 | South Korea |
| 7 |  LyonFrance | 1,373 | France |
| 8 |  MontrealCanada | 1,360 | Canada |
| 9 |  AntwerpBelgium | 1,344 | Belgium |
| 10 |  Salzburgest.Austria | 1,337 | Austria |
| 11 | SeoulSouth Korea | 1,293 | South Korea |
| 12 | ViennaAustria | 1,270 | Austria |
| 13 |  AucklandNew Zealand | 1,232 | New Zealand |
| 14 | WellingtonNew Zealand | 1,232 | New Zealand |
| 15 |  AustinUnited States | 1,208 | United States |
| 16 |  KrakowPoland | 1,207 | Poland |
| 17 |  ValenciaSpain | 1,181 | Spain |
| 18 |  MelbourneAustralia | 1,180 | Australia |
| 19 |  AnkaraTurkey | 1,180 | Turkey |
| 20 |  DebrecenHungary | 1,164 | Hungary |
| 21 | MedellinColombia | 1,154 | Colombia |
| 22 | BrisbaneAustralia | 1,130 | Australia |
| 23 | TorontoCanada | 1,123 | Canada |
| 24 |  RotterdamNetherlands | 1,117 | Netherlands |
| 25 | BrusselsBelgium | 1,115 | Belgium |
| 26 |  HamburgGermany | 1,114 | Germany |
| 27 | MadridSpain | 1,090 | Spain |
| 28 |  EdinburghUnited Kingdom | 1,081 | United Kingdom |
| 29 |  BrnoCzech Republic | 1,062 | Czech Republic |
| 30 | FrankfurtGermany | 1,060 | Germany |
| 31 |  TallinnEstonia | 1,054 | Estonia |
| 32 |  RomeItaly | 1,054 | Italy |
| 33 | BarcelonaSpain | 1,037 | Spain |
| 34 |  OsloNorway | 1,035 | Norway |
| 35 | TokyoJapan | 1,035 | Japan |
| 36 | ManchesterUnited Kingdom | 1,035 | United Kingdom |
| 37 | BerlinGermany | 1,034 | Germany |
| 38 | VancouverCanada | 1,033 | Canada |
| 39 |  GenevaSwitzerland | 1,032 | Switzerland |
| 40 | ChicagoUnited States | 1,030 | United States |
| 41 | ParisFrance | 998 | France |
| 42 | WarsawPoland | 994 | Poland |
| 43 | StockholmSweden | 978 | Sweden |
| 44 |  ThessalonikiGreece | 971 | Greece |
| 45 | PragueCzech Republic | 962 | Czech Republic |
| 46 | IstanbulTurkey | 950 | Turkey |
| 47 | SeattleUnited States | 938 | United States |
| 48 | ZurichSwitzerland | 937 | Switzerland |
| 49 | AthensGreece | 933 | Greece |
| 50 | SydneyAustralia | 932 | Australia |
| 51 | BudapestHungary | 931 | Hungary |
| 52 | Los AngelesUnited States | 924 | United States |
| 53 | MunichGermany | 905 | Germany |
| 54 | FlorenceItaly | 899 | Italy |
| 55 | AmsterdamNetherlands | 898 | Netherlands |
| 56 | MiamiUnited States | 897 | United States |
| 57 |  CopenhagenDenmark | 894 | Denmark |
| 58 |  PortoPortugal | 866 | Portugal |
| 59 |  CorkIreland | 821 | Ireland |
| 60 |  Tel AvivIsrael | 812 | Israel |
| 61 | MilanItaly | 785 | Italy |
| 62 |  GuadalajaraMexico | 758 | Mexico |
| 63 | DublinIreland | 751 | Ireland |
| 64 | LisbonPortugal | 715 | Portugal |
| 65 | San FranciscoUnited States | 698 | United States |
| 66 | LondonUnited Kingdom | 695 | United Kingdom |
| 67 | Mexico CityMexico | 649 | Mexico |
| 68 | New YorkUnited States | 628 | United States |
Rows marked est. rank on an estimated cost basket rather than a sourced reading, so treat their exact position as approximate. Everything else here is measured. Which cities those are, and why, is in the methodology.
The top three, in context
Osaka is the clearest case of a large rich-country city whose costs never decoupled: Japan's average wage against a cost index of 25, well under half what the same economy charges in Tokyo.
The wage is NATIONAL and the cost is a CITY's. That is what makes decoupling visible, but it also means the figure is not what residents of that city earn on average, which in a capital is usually higher. It assumes you earn the local average: a foreign salary, a remote contract or a senior role changes the answer entirely. Tax is an effective single-filer rate, not marginal, and ignores regional surcharges.
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