relocation-cost-comparison

Compare city relocation budgets with Crawlora itemized Numbeo costs and optional US housing-market context. Use for household expense scenarios, rent comparisons, or choosing between cities with explicit currency, household, and price-basis assumptions.

Access and scope

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your Crawlora key. Prefer the listed Crawlora MCP tools when connected; otherwise use the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh, which sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Read reference/endpoints.md for exact methods and parameters. Check application code as well as HTTP status; payloads are inside data. Stop on authentication errors, back off on 429, and retry a transient upstream failure once. Bound pages and calls by the requested scope and credit budget. Preserve source IDs, URLs, retrieval times, and source dates where supplied.

Build comparable household expense scenarios for the user's candidate cities. Start with household size, housing size/location, rent versus buy, transport, spending pattern, and budget currency. Ask only for assumptions that materially change the result; mark provisional assumptions so the comparison can be revised.

Resolve geography and comparable prices

1. Discover Numbeo cities from current rankings or the relevant country response's cities[].city_slug. There is no city-search/autocomplete route. Preserve the disambiguated city, country, and slug; similar city names are not a match.
2. Fetch itemized costs for the chosen slugs. Preserve item names and units, price ranges, last_update, contributor count, and source URL. Match the same basket and rent basis (bedrooms, city centre/outside centre) across cities.
3. A raw currency glyph such as $ does not establish USD. Verify the currency before conversion and retain the dated, sourced or user-supplied exchange rate. Without a verified rate, show separate local-currency budgets and mark the converted comparison unavailable. Never combine amounts in different currencies.
4. For US purchase-market context, discover housing dataset region/property-type values and resolve the correct city/metro/county/ZIP record. Keep period and geography fixed. Median sale/list prices and modelled affordability metrics are contextual aggregates, not monthly rent quotes or the user's mortgage. Use Numbeo-only evidence for locations outside that dataset's coverage.

sh

scripts/crawlora.sh /numbeo/cost-of-living/rankings scope=current
scripts/crawlora.sh /numbeo/cost-of-living/country country="United States"
# Select actual returned city slugs before requesting itemized prices:
# scripts/crawlora.sh "/numbeo/cost-of-living/city/$CITY_SLUG"
scripts/crawlora.sh /datasets/housing-markets/facets facet=region_type latest=true

Calculate and present scenarios

Create a basket ledger: item/unit, monthly quantity, source price/range, currency, observation date, monthly subtotal, and assumption. Calculate monthly basket = sum(unit price × monthly quantity) using comparable units. Keep rent, groceries, utilities, transport, and discretionary spending separate; do not count Numbeo's composite indices as extra dollar expenses. Separate one-time moving/setup costs from recurring spending. Missing childcare, taxes, insurance, deposits, or fees remain excluded/unknown instead of zero. Gross salary is not take-home income; do not imply savings without a supplied net basis.

Return the basket, city-by-city scenarios, major cost differences, excluded items, freshness/coverage limits, and assumptions that could change the choice. Crowdsourced ranges are observed price ranges, not confidence intervals or individual quotes. Weight lifestyle preferences only when the user provides weights; prices alone do not establish a universally best city. A comparison does not authorise contacting agents, booking movers, or applying for housing.