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The Value Metro Index

What a metro gives you for what it costs: its Metro Power score divided by its price level, where the United States is 100.

4,211 metros · prices: BEA 2024 (US), World Bank ICP 2025 (elsewhere) · built 2026-10-23

The top 300

Higher means more power for each unit of cost; the price column says where each metro's price comes from.

How this is measured

Value is the Metro Power score divided by the price level over 100, so a metro whose prices sit at half the US level counts its score twice.

Only the United States publishes price levels for each metro (BEA Regional Price Parities). Everywhere else the price is the country's World Bank ICP price level, a national average: a capital usually costs more than its country, so its value here is flattering. US metros BEA does not publish carry their state's price level outside its metro areas. A metro made of two metro areas uses its principal one.

Low-cost countries rise a long way: a price level of 25 multiplies a score by four. That is the arithmetic of value, not a judgement of the place.

Cairo
#1 · Egypt · price 15.3 (country)
301.2
Beijing
#2 · China · price 47.3 (country)
241.2
Shanghai
#3 · China · price 47.3 (country)
239.5
Mumbai
#4 · India · price 23.0 (country)
236.5
Guangzhou
#5 · China · price 47.3 (country)
223.7
Delhi
#6 · India · price 23.0 (country)
207.4
Tokyo
#7 · Japan · price 64.9 (country)
206.7
Moscow
#8 · Russia · price 35.4 (country)
203.1
London
#9 · United Kingdom · price 89.2 (country)
202.6
Seoul
#10 · South Korea · price 57.4 (country)
193.2
Paris
#11 · France · price 76.6 (country)
187.8
Bangkok
#12 · Thailand · price 30.7 (country)
178.5

US metros

All on BEA price levels, the like-for-like comparison.

New York
#1 · United States · price 112.6 (metro)
162.2
San Francisco-San Jose
#2 · United States · price 115.6 (metro)
108.6
Los Angeles
#3 · United States · price 113.6 (metro)
96.0
Chicago
#4 · United States · price 103.6 (metro)
87.1
Washington-Baltimore
#5 · United States · price 108.9 (metro)
86.3
Boston
#6 · United States · price 108.3 (metro)
80.1
Houston
#7 · United States · price 98.6 (metro)
68.0
Philadelphia
#8 · United States · price 102.6 (metro)
58.2
Atlanta
#9 · United States · price 100.1 (metro)
54.4
Dallas
#10 · United States · price 103.1 (metro)
54.1
Seattle
#11 · United States · price 111.1 (metro)
53.4
Miami
#12 · United States · price 114.2 (metro)
52.6

Sources

Cite this: The Value Metro Index, Citizen of Nowhere, as of 23 Oct 2026. https://rankings.citizenofnowhere.org/rankings/value. Reuse with credit under CC BY 4.0.