Milestone: 500,000 prices in the Expatistan Cost-of-Living Index

Posted By on 08/11/2012

A little over a year ago, we shared an exciting fact: The Expatistan Cost-of-Living Index had collected 200,000 prices. As we wrote at the time,

Expatistan has only existed for 20 months, which means users have entered an average of 10,000 prices a month since its founding. But that average is misleading. Back in June, when I last summarized the site's growth, users had only submitted about 150,000 prices. So there have been 50,000 new prices in the last couple months, meaning the site's database is currently growing at over 20,000 new prices per month (or nearly 700 new prices per day).

Well, that was exciting then. But now we’ve reached a new level. Recently, the Index crossed the threshold of its 500,000th price. If you’re interested in the math, that means there have been 300,000 new prices entered in the last year, meaning the site has maintained its more-than-20,000-prices-a-month pace for over a year now.

For all of this, we need to say thanks. This site exists thanks to users like you, who are actively working to keep its data accurate and current. We’re grateful to and impressed by all of you who want to share information with fellow global citizens around the world.

As a small way to give back now, here are a few more facts about all the new prices that have come in over the last year. You might find them interesting.

The top five countries in total number of prices added are:

  1. United States
  2. India
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Canada
  5. Australia

It’s unfortunate, if understandable, that English-speaking countries are leading all others in engagement with this English-language website. (And those five countries, in that order, perfectly match the English-speaking countries with the most internet users.) But that means that if you’re from a country other than the five above, make sure your friends know about Expatistan and enter prices into its database. What better way to attract foreigners to your city, or just to see a comparison between your city and others, than by making sure your hometown has lots of current prices entered?

Interestingly, the countries above are not necessarily those with the most committed Expatistan users. The list below shows the countries with the most prices per visitor. In other words, these countries send a relatively small number of people to the site, but those who come enter the most prices:

  1. Argentina
  2. Colombia
  3. Russia
  4. Poland
  5. Brazil

So while more Americans than Argentines are using Expatistan, the Argentines lead the world in devotion to helping the Index. We want to thank all of them, our American and Argentine users, our Indian and Colombian users, and all other Expatistan users for keeping the Expatistan Cost-of-Living Index the biggest and best free price-comparison database in the world.

Now on to a million prices!