Last updated: July 2026
What this site is
UKCostOfLiving.org is a free set of comparison tools for understanding what it actually costs to live in different parts of the UK. There are three main tools: a general city cost comparison, a student cost of living comparison covering university cities, and a council tax comparison covering local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales.
Alongside the tools we publish guides and analysis on topics like council tax rises, moving between cities, student budgets and energy bills.
Why it exists
Cost of living data in the UK is scattered. The Office for National Statistics publishes national inflation figures. NatWest surveys students. Individual councils publish their own tax rates. Rental platforms hold pricing data. All of it is public, and almost none of it is presented in a way that answers the question people actually have, which is usually some version of “what would it cost me to live there instead of here?”
This site exists to put those figures side by side. Every tool is built around direct comparison rather than isolated numbers, because a cost figure on its own is difficult to interpret without something to measure it against.
How we work
We compile figures from published sources rather than generating our own estimates. Every dataset used on this site is documented on our methodology page, including which organisation produced it, what period it covers, and when we last updated our copy of it.
Where a figure is an average, an estimate, or a modelled value rather than a directly measured one, we try to say so. Where sources disagree, we say that too. We would rather present a figure with its limitations attached than present a confident number that turns out to be misleading.
What we are not
We are not financial advisers, and nothing on this site is financial advice. The tools produce estimates to help with planning and comparison, not recommendations about what you should do. Individual circumstances vary enormously, and no comparison tool can account for yours.
We are not affiliated with NatWest, the Office for National Statistics, any local authority, any university, or any of the other organisations whose published data we reference. Where we cite their figures we do so under the terms those organisations publish under, and we credit the source.
Full details are set out in our terms of use.
Corrections
If you spot a figure that looks wrong, we want to know. Cost data changes constantly and sources are sometimes revised after publication. Corrections are genuinely useful to us and we act on them.
You can reach us at hello@ukcostofliving.org or via our contact page.
How the site is funded
The site is free to use and carries advertising served by Google AdSense. We have no control over which specific ads appear, and the presence of an advertisement is not an endorsement. Advertising revenue does not influence which cities rank where in our tools — those rankings are produced from the source data described in our methodology.
How advertising affects your data is covered in our privacy policy.