What comparison tools are available on MyLifeElsewhere.com?

Updated

MyLifeElsewhere.com offers five main comparison tools, each answering a different question about moving or comparing places. Quality of Life compares healthcare, education, and safety across territories; Cost of Living compares prices for groceries, rent, and more across countries and cities; Size Comparison overlays countries, states, and cities on a map to show true size; the Salary Estimator calculates what salary you'd need to maintain your current lifestyle in a new location; and the True Size Map lets you drag and drop countries onto an interactive map to compare real area. All of these are reachable from the site's tool section, and the site also supports direct head-to-head comparisons between any two places.

The five tools and what each one does

Tool What it compares Best for
Quality of Life Healthcare, education, safety, and more across territories Judging overall living conditions in a potential destination
Cost of Living Groceries, rent, and other prices for countries and cities Estimating day-to-day expenses before a move
Size Comparison Countries, states, and cities overlaid on a map Seeing how large a place really is relative to another
Salary Estimator The salary needed to maintain your current lifestyle in a new location Working out a target income before negotiating or relocating
True Size Map Real area of countries, via drag-and-drop on an interactive map Correcting for map projection distortion when comparing land area

Quality of Life

This tool compares healthcare, education, safety, and other quality-of-life measures across territories. Use it when the question is "would life actually be better there?" rather than "what does it cost?" It sits alongside the site's composite rankings, which score places across multiple quality-of-life and cost metrics — including dedicated rankings for digital nomads, retirement, and families.

Cost of Living

This tool shows how prices for groceries, rent, and similar expenses stack up worldwide, and it works at both the country and city level. It's the natural first stop if your decision hinges on affordability, and it pairs well with the Salary Estimator: one tells you what things cost, the other tells you what you'd need to earn.

Size Comparison

This tool overlays countries, states, and cities on a map so you can see their true size side by side. It's useful for correcting the distortion built into standard world maps — the site's own blog covers the Mercator projection problem, explaining how that projection misrepresents country sizes.

Salary Estimator

The Salary Estimator is built for the specific question of moving somewhere new: it calculates what salary you'd need to maintain your current lifestyle in the new location. The site presents it as a calculator you launch directly, so you can run the number before committing to a target income.

True Size Map

The True Size Map is the interactive counterpart to Size Comparison: you drag and drop countries onto a map to compare their real area. The site also offers a "Build Your Own True Size Map" entry point that launches the interactive map.

Comparing two places directly

Beyond the five tools, the core of the site is head-to-head comparison. You can compare any two places to scale, and the site surfaces popular pairings — for example, United States vs. Ecuador, Canada, Greece, Egypt, Spain, Australia, Russia, Ireland, Poland, Peru, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Thailand, China, Germany, Austria, Iceland, and Vietnam. There's also a random comparison option if you don't have a destination in mind.

A direct comparison pulls together the statistics that differentiate one country from another, including cost of living and geographic size.

Which tool to start with

  • Deciding whether to move at all: start with Quality of Life, then check the composite "Best Country For..." rankings for your situation (digital nomad, retirement, or family).
  • Budgeting for a specific city: start with Cost of Living at the city level, then run the Salary Estimator.
  • Curious about scale or geography: use Size Comparison or the True Size Map.
  • Already have two places in mind: skip straight to a direct comparison between them.

The site describes itself as a collaborative community built around one question: if you moved to another country, what would your life be like? Each tool answers a different part of that question, so the right starting point depends on which part you're trying to settle first.