Where do you get the most pleasant days for your money?
Nepal leads on cost per comfortable day at $45/day; Türkiye is last of the 15 shown at $267/day.
Somewhere cheap and grey is not the same value as somewhere cheap and pleasant, but every cost-of-living ranking treats them identically. This one divides a year's living cost by the number of comfortable days that year actually contains, on a $5,000-a-month remote income.
Be clear about what this is: a modelled cost over a measured climate. The climate half is real observation. The cost half comes from a price model whose error against published housing figures has been measured at between 0.64× and 1.61× depending on the country — dividing it by a real number does not make it exact.
Countries with no comfortable days at all under this definition are dropped rather than ranked, because there is no meaningful cost-per-day to report for them.
| # | Country | Cost per comfortable day | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nepal | $45/day | 116 comfortable days, via Kathmandu |
| 2 | Georgia | $121/day | 62 comfortable days, via Tbilisi |
| 3 | Egypt | $133/day | 117 comfortable days, via Cairo |
| 4 | Albania | $138/day | 79 comfortable days, via Tirana |
| 5 | Saudi Arabia | $139/day | 84 comfortable days, via Riyadh |
| 6 | South Africa | $142/day | 182 comfortable days, via Cape Town |
| 7 | Serbia | $148/day | 77 comfortable days, via Belgrade |
| 8 | Chile | $151/day | 138 comfortable days, via Santiago |
| 9 | Mexico | $174/day | 152 comfortable days, via Mexico City |
| 10 | Colombia | $179/day | 125 comfortable days, via Medellín |
| 11 | Brazil | $181/day | 132 comfortable days, via São Paulo |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $195/day | 79 comfortable days, via Dubai |
| 13 | Argentina | $207/day | 123 comfortable days, via Buenos Aires |
| 14 | Portugal | $244/day | 130 comfortable days, via Lisbon |
| 15 | Türkiye | $267/day | 95 comfortable days, via Istanbul |
How this is worked out: (Monthly total cost × 12) ÷ comfortable days per year, on $5,000/month. Total cost is rent plus the everyday basket plus out-of-pocket healthcare plus tax; comfortable days come from ERA5 reanalysis via the representative city named in each row. Estimates for comparison, not advice.
Check your own numbers
A ranking is a starting point, not an answer — your income, household and destination change the order. The Total cost evaluator runs the same engine against your own figures, and every country above links to its own page.