30 cities · no signup · 11 categories
CostMyNomad
Brutally honest monthly nomad budget calculator. 30 cities, no fluff.
From Chiang Mai to Tokyo — 30 digital nomad hub cities priced honestly across 11 categories. Accommodation, food, coworking, mobile data, gym, health insurance, visa amortization, transit, coffee — plus a cost-per-protein metric and coffee-to-stay gentrification ratio you won't find anywhere else.
30 nomad hub cities, 11 cost categories
Bangkok to New York, Lisbon to Bali — every city priced across accommodation, food, coworking, mobile data, gym, health insurance, visa, transit, coffee, laundry and lifestyle buffer.
Weekly auto-refresh, no stale data
A GitHub Action re-runs every Monday and commits a new cities.json. Each city's last-updated date is shown — no 2019 averages dressed up as 2026.
Browser-only, no account, no tracking
Inputs never leave your device. Share by URL hash (lz-string + base64). No login, no cookies for analytics, no server-side database.
Where & how long
Daily life
Work
Health & fitness
Logistics
Buffer
Drinks, dating, weekend trips, streaming subs — things you'll pretend you didn't buy.
Monthly burn
$3,062
/ month
Per-day burn
$102
/ day
Cost per 100g protein
$1.10
Supermarket chicken breast — your gym-bro budget proxy.
Coffee-to-stay ratio
1,164 ☕
How many specialty coffees your monthly accommodation equals. The bigger the number, the dumber the city.
Breakdown
Where & how long
Daily life
Work
Health & fitness
Logistics
Buffer
A normal human budget. Boring, but functional.
Advertise here in this city — Lisbon
Coworking, visa agency, language school, gym, relocation service. Reach nomads who already picked your city.
→ Email umma@xx.gg
How it works
Three steps. Average completion: under a minute.
01
Pick a city
Choose from 30 nomad hubs. Southeast Asia, Latin America, mid-tier Europe and top-tier Western cities all covered.
02
Set your lifestyle
Toggle days, accommodation style, food, coworking, gym, health insurance, visa type, mobile data, laundry. Each pick re-prices instantly.
03
Read the verdict
Monthly burn, per-day burn, cost-per-100g-protein, coffee-to-stay ratio — and a B-grade verdict. Share via URL hash.
Browse cities
30 cities sorted by region & tier. Click any to open the live calculator + price table + FAQ for that city.
Curated by data
Automatically ranked by long-term lease + local food + coworking. Refreshed weekly.
💸 Cheapest 3
💎 Best value (mid-tier)
From the blog
City comparisons, visa guides, data deep-dives.
data · 2026-05-01
guide · 2026-04-20
playbook · 2026-04-10
Nomad glossary
Plain-language definitions for terms like geo arbitrage, tax residency, and the coffee-to-stay ratio.
FAQ
The most common questions about nomad budgets, visas and cost of living. Marked up as FAQPage schema so AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview) can cite the answers verbatim.
+How much does it cost to be a digital nomad per month?
It depends almost entirely on which city you're in. Southeast Asian hubs (Chiang Mai, Da Nang, Bali) run $1,000-$1,800/month for an Airbnb-and-coworking lifestyle. Latin America (Medellín, Mexico City, Buenos Aires) sits at $1,400-$2,800. Mid-tier Europe (Lisbon, Porto, Prague, Tbilisi) lands $1,800-$3,800. Top-tier Western cities (NYC, London, Tokyo, Singapore) start around $4,500 and have no upper bound. Use the calculator above to model your specific lifestyle.
+What expenses are actually included in the calculator?
Eleven categories: accommodation (Airbnb monthly vs long-term lease), food (local / mixed / Western), coffee, mobile data / SIM, laundry, coworking (none / part-time / full-time), gym (chain or boutique), international health insurance (SafetyWing, Genki, Cigna tiers), monthly transit pass, amortized visa cost, and a lifestyle buffer for drinks/dating/weekend trips/streaming subs.
+How accurate are the city numbers?
Numbers are seeded from public cost-of-living sources (Numbeo averages, NomadList, expat surveys, official rental indexes) and refreshed weekly via a GitHub Action that writes back to public/data/cities.json. Treat them as a planning baseline, not a quote — actual rent and food vary by neighborhood and season.
+Why is there no login or account?
Everything runs in your browser. Your budget configuration is encoded into the URL hash using lz-string + base64, so you can share or bookmark it without us storing anything server-side.
+How is the 'Cost per 100g protein' computed?
Each city has a single proteinPer100g datapoint — the supermarket price of 100 grams of chicken breast in USD. It's a deliberately simple proxy for whether a city is friendly to a high-protein, gym-bro lifestyle.
+What's the 'Coffee-to-Stay' ratio?
It tells you how many specialty coffees your monthly accommodation cost equals at that city's prevailing café price. The bigger the number, the more decoupled your housing cost is from local prices — a fast proxy for tourist-driven gentrification.
+Should I use a tourist visa or a nomad visa?
If you're staying < 90 days and your passport is strong, the tourist visa is almost always cheaper. For 6+ month stays, a dedicated nomad visa (Indonesia E33G, Portugal D8, Colombia Migrante, Estonia DNV, Spain DNV, etc.) usually wins — it's tax-clearer, lets you open a local bank account, and amortized monthly is cheaper than border-runs. The calculator handles both.
+What does the health insurance toggle assume?
Three tiers: Basic ($56/mo, SafetyWing-tier travel insurance suitable for short trips), Full ($145/mo, Genki / WorldTrips-style true nomad coverage), Premium ($320/mo, Cigna / Allianz-tier expat insurance with US coverage). Health insurance is not city-dependent so the same monthly price applies everywhere.
+How do I advertise on a specific city page?
Email umma@xx.gg with the city, ad slot (top placement vs in-line within a category), CTA copy, and the URL you want to send traffic to. Slots fall back to a generic 'Advertise here' card when nobody has booked.