New York City is one of the most expensive cities in the world

Here’s a bit of reassurance: you are not going crazy, everything in New York is costly—at least according to data company Numbeo’s Cost of Living Index by City, which just crowned New York as the third most expensive city in the world, right after Geneva and Zurich, both Swiss towns.

To come up with its ranking, the company analyzed data from January 2024 through mid-year, specifically scoring towns based on cost of living, rent, groceries, restaurant prices and local purchasing power.

Even more specifically, the company used the cost of living in the Big Apple as its baseline, giving it a score of 100. The authors then compared all other entries, determining whether they are more or less expansive than New York’s baseline.

What’s pretty remarkable is that out of the ten mentioned cities, seven of them are in the United States, effectively turning our country into the costliest one across the globe.

What can we say? We’re still madly in love with our New York—no matter how much it costs to live here. 

The 10 most expensive cities in the world:

1. Geneva, Switzerland

2. Zurich, Switzerland

3. New York, New York

4. San Francisco, California, United States

5. Boston, Massachusetts, United States

6. Reykjavik, Iceland

7. Washington D.C., United States

8. Seattle, Washington, United States

9. Los Angeles, California, United States

10. Chicago, Illinois, United States