pyanzin.com/Where to live

Montréal · Amsterdam · Berlin · Paris

Where to live

Four cities where a senior product role is realistic, compared on what a salary actually leaves in hand, how safe the streets are, and what the state gives back. Every number is an official statistic or comes from one transparent salary model, and nothing is blended into an index. Set your situation in the bar below; every model figure on the page follows it.

Gross salary
Household
Bedrooms

Figures marked model follow the bar above; official statistics do not.

The four cities, ranked for your scenario

The score is a weighted mean of five cityparity dimensions, 0 to 100. The weights are yours; the facts below the score are not weighted at all.
Change what matters to you

Where the salary goes

The same salary converted into each city's currency, taxed, then spent on the same basket. The filled part of the bar is what the year costs; the outlined part is what stays in your pocket. Switch the household above to see what a two-year-old in full-time nursery does: Berlin barely notices, Amsterdam goes into deficit.

The scorecard

Thirty-three indicators in six groups, each read on its own terms. Nothing here is combined into a score.
Bold = best of the four bar = share of the best value in the row model = cityparity's salary model, follows the scenario bar; everything else is an official statistic national = the country's figure, the city has none of its own i = note

Inside each city

Recorded crime by district, and a cost-of-living measure where the city publishes one. Darker means more recorded crime.

Method, caveats and sources

How to read the numbers nine caveats
  • The scenario and the weights are yours. The bar at the top drives every cityparity figure from a pre-computed grid of 36 scenarios. The composite score is a weighted mean of five dimensions and re-ranks the cards as you move the sliders.
  • Registry data has no sampling error, only systematic error. Under-reporting, legal definitions and recording reforms dominate. Values are rounded to what the data supports; the exact figure is in the hover. Homicide carries a ± band from the victim count alone.
  • Crime rates divide by residents. Tourists and commuters add crime but not population, so city centres (Paris 1er, Amsterdam's Burgwallen) read high by construction.
  • Each country measures city crime its own way: Canada a severity index, the Netherlands and France per 1,000, Germany per 100,000. Only the rank within the country is comparable.
  • The tax wedge is a model. OECD computes what a stylised worker owes; it excludes VAT and wealth taxes. The cityparity figures are a second, independent model with a different basket. The two agree on ordering, not on level.
  • Price-to-income is each country against its own history, not an absolute ratio. Germany at 87 is cheap for Germany.
  • Amsterdam's 30% ruling is not applied. A qualifying newcomer (about €68.6k gross or more) pays no tax on 30% of salary for five years, capped at €262k. That materially narrows the gap in the salary chart. Germany, France and Canada have no equivalent.
  • Minimum wages are gross and monthly by Eurostat's convention: hourly rates × statutory weekly hours × 52 ÷ 12 (France 35 h, Québec 40 h). Canada sets minimum wages provincially; Québec stands in for Montréal and has no PPS value or EU rank.
  • Reference years differ by row and are shown under each label. Crime statistics lag about 16 months; PPP price levels about 18.
Sources official statistics and one model
  • UNODC UN-CTS: homicide, theft, burglary, assault (the only harmonised cross-country crime series)
  • Eurostat crim_off_cat · ilc_lvho07a · prc_ppp_ind · hlth_silc_08 · earn_ses22_49 · nama_10r_2hhinc · earn_mw_cur · earn_mw_avgr2 (minimum wages)
  • OECD Analytical House Prices · PPP price level indices · Average Wages · Taxing Wages · Income Distribution Database · System of Health Accounts
  • Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index · CPI · 11-10-0190 · 14-10-0417 · CMHC Rental Market Survey · CNESST Québec minimum wage
  • CBS · BKA / Kriminalitätsatlas Berlin · SSMSI · SPVM: city and district crime · CBS Kerncijfers wijken · Ville de Paris rent control · Senate of Berlin GESIx: district cost of living
  • ECB MIR · Bank of Canada: mortgage rates
  • cityparity: take-home pay, rents, childcare, parental leave, commute, dimension scores. A 36-scenario grid pulled through its MCP interface, data 2024–2026.

All calculation runs in ClickHouse (clickhouse local) over the raw official files; the result tables feed this page through a build script. No number on this page is typed by hand. GitHub