Cost of Living Calculator

This tool has no built-in cost-of-living data

To be upfront about what this calculator actually does: it holds no Kenyan city cost data of any kind. There is no verified, city-to-city cost-of-living index for Kenya behind it — the two index numbers you enter are entirely your own estimates, and the calculator performs one piece of arithmetic on them: your salary, multiplied by the destination index, divided by your current index. The quality of the result is entirely a function of the quality of the two numbers you supply.

That arithmetic is still useful, provided the inputs are grounded in real research rather than guesswork.

Building your own index

Set your current location's index to 100 as a baseline — this carries no meaning on its own, it's just a reference point. Then estimate the destination's index relative to it by comparing the specific costs that matter most to your budget: rent for a comparable home, a typical grocery basket, transport to work, and school fees if relevant. If rent, groceries and transport at the destination add up to roughly 30% more than what you pay now, an index of 130 reflects that. If they add up to 20% less, an index of 80 does. The comparison works best when it's built from prices you've actually checked — listings, quotes, or numbers from someone living there — rather than a general impression.

Worked example

The calculator's own defaults — a KES 150,000 salary compared at equal indices, 100 to 100 — return the same KES 150,000, because an equal ratio changes nothing; this is the calculator's way of showing that the baseline alone carries no information. The arithmetic becomes useful once the destination index actually differs from the baseline. If you researched your destination and concluded it runs about 30% more expensive across rent, groceries and transport (index 130 against a baseline of 100), the same KES 150,000 salary would need to be KES 195,000 to buy the equivalent standard of living there. If instead you found it runs about 20% cheaper (index 80), the equivalent salary would be KES 120,000.

Research the destination's actual costs before relying on any figure this calculator produces — it is a translation of your own research, not a published cost-of-living statistic or a comparison service.