City PPP, not a country average
Most “PPP salary calculators” apply one World Bank number to an entire country. San Francisco and rural Ohio then look the same. In-Hand’s PPP salary calculator compares city to city — housing, food, transport, healthcare, and utilities — then converts at the market FX rate so you see the salary that actually preserves your lifestyle.
What we compute
Equivalent salary = your salary × (destination city PPP index ÷ origin city PPP index), then expressed in the destination currency at the current exchange rate. The index is a price-level ratio built from local costs, not a national consumption basket.
Example: £70k in London is not “£70k × USD/GBP.” It is £70k scaled by New York’s price level relative to London’s. That is why two US cities can need very different dollars for the same London lifestyle.
How this differs from World Bank country PPP
World Bank private-consumption PPP (PA.NUS.PRVT.PP) is the right tool for comparing countries in the aggregate. It is the wrong tool for an offer letter in a specific city. We still use World Bank series as one input, then overlay city-level cost data (Numbeo and similar sources, refreshed quarterly). If your city is missing, pick the nearest metro — Oakland tracks San Francisco more closely than it tracks a US national average.
What this is not
- Not a full tax return, and not a payroll engine. Pair it with the take-home calculator for the destination country (US, UK, Ireland, and the others on this site) to see tax and social charges.
- Not a household budget builder (rent-vs-suburb sliders, visa proof-of-funds). Those tools answer a different question.
- Not advice. Spending, neighbourhood, and family size will move the number; treat ±10–15% as the planning band.
Use the calculator
Open the PPP salary calculator and pick any two of the 83 supported cities. Example conversions (London–New York, Singapore–London, and others) sit on the same hub.