What a move costs you
Pick where you live now and where you're thinking of moving. Enter your salary or a real offer, and the tool compares the rent, the cost of living, and how long it takes for the move to pay for itself. Our China cost-of-living overview ranks every city against its U.S. twin →
By Lin Hai. See how every figure here is sourced on the About page
This is a relocation calculator and a moving affordability calculator in one. It answers the cost-of-living salary question behind any move: how many months of savings it takes for the move to pay for itself. Pick your two cities, type a salary, and the result appears below.
How the verdict is built
What your monthly difference decides
Most advice about moving stops at "it's cheaper there". A cheaper city can still leave you with less. Cheap cities often pay cheap salaries, so this tool asks a different question: after paying for life in both places, do you have more left over, or less?
- Your monthly difference: what's left after costs there, minus what's left after costs here. Positive and you gain every month you stay. Negative and you are funding the move out of savings.
- Your payback: the one-time cost of getting there (deposit, shipping, flights, setup buffer) divided by that monthly difference. Under three months and the money barely needs debating. Three to twelve and it's a real case, but not one that decides itself. Past a year and you pay a long time for the privilege.
The tool starts with both salary boxes holding the same number: your current pay. That is the pure cost difference, and it is the right frame if your income comes with you: remote work, a transfer, the same employer. The question this tool cannot answer for you is what you would earn locally. If you are taking a local job, type the offer into the second box. For a move from San Francisco to Shanghai the local median is about $5,500 a month lower, and the verdict flips. The same move can help or hurt, depending on whether your pay follows you.
Five real moves, priced out
What the verdict looks like, priced both ways
Every verdict depends on one question the calculator cannot answer: what will you earn there? So each route below is priced twice, once the way the tool defaults to it, with your current pay following you, and once on the typical local salary of the destination, which is the local-salary reading. Payback figures assume the flat one-time costs of $1,500 for a move inside China and $7,500 for an intercontinental one.
| Route | If your pay follows you | If you take the local salary | Does the verdict flip? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shanghai → Chengdu | +$596 /mo | +$255 /mo | No — cheaper city wins either way |
| Shenzhen → San Francisco | −$3,940 /mo | +$2,060 /mo | Yes — only a San Francisco paycheck makes it work |
| Beijing → Sanya | +$233 /mo | −$98 /mo | Yes — only if your pay travels with you |
| Victoria → Qingdao | +$2,002 /mo | +$742 /mo | No, but the payback nearly triples |
| San Francisco → Shanghai | +$3,719 /mo | −$1,790 /mo | Yes — the whole case rests on keeping your pay |
Shanghai → Chengdu: a clear yes
Chengdu costs 1.8× less all-in, so the answer is yes under either salary story — +$596 a month if your pay follows you (a $1,500 move repays in 2.5 months), still +$255 on a local salary (5.9 months). Both salary stories agree on this one. See the Shanghai guide and Chengdu.
Shenzhen → San Francisco: when the direction matters
On the default reading, this move looks unaffordable: San Francisco costs 4.5× Shenzhen, so keeping your $900 Shenzhen pay loses $3,940 a month. But take a San Francisco median job and you are $2,060 a month ahead, repaying $7,500 of flights and deposits in 3.6 months. The move is neither expensive nor cheap — what decides it is which paycheck you are paid. See the Shenzhen vs San Francisco comparison.
Beijing → Sanya: only works if your pay travels with you
With your pay following you, Sanya saves $233 a month and repays $1,500 in 6.4 months — slow, but it does repay. Take a Sanya local salary instead and the surplus turns to −$98 a month: the median Sanya wage of $1,100 sits just under Sanya's own $1,118 all-in month, so the move never pays itself back. At that margin, a single housing choice changes the answer, and the local-salary reading is a lifestyle choice wearing a financial costume. Compare Beijing and Sanya.
Victoria → Qingdao: right direction, long wait
The all-in gap is $2,002 a month, and with your pay following you the $7,500 move repays in 3.7 months. Take a Qingdao local salary instead and the surplus is $742, stretching the wait to 10.1 months. Same city; only the salary source changes. If the money is the only reason, this one is slow. See Qingdao vs Victoria and Qingdao.
San Francisco → Shanghai: the one move where the paycheck decides
On the default reading this is the single best deal on the list: Shanghai costs $3,719 a month less, so keeping your San Francisco pay turns the move into a $44,600-a-year raise. Take a Shanghai local salary and it inverts to −$1,790 a month — 26% of the San Francisco paycheck gone. There is no compromise reading here. Whether it works depends on whether you keep your San Francisco pay. See the Shanghai guide.
The one-time bill
How much does it cost to move to China?
The calculator treats the move itself as a separate, one-off cost, because it is. For a move inside China we assume a flat $1,500: roughly $600 in deposit and first month's rent, $400 in shipping and freight for a studio's worth of belongings, $300 in flights or train, and $200 of setup and buffer. For an intercontinental move we assume $7,500: about $2,000 in deposits and first month in the new city, $3,000 in shipping and freight, $1,200 in flights for you and possibly family, and $1,300 of visas, setup and buffer. These are planning anchors, not quotes. The four boxes in the tool let you replace them with your real numbers, because a relocation's true bill depends on how much you ship, whether your employer covers the flight, and what the new city asks up front. We will not guess that for you.
When not to trust this verdict
Four things it cannot see
- One adult, city center, one bedroom. Children, school fees, a second bedroom or a suburb commute all move the number, usually against you.
- A median is not an offer. Leave the salary box empty and the tool uses a city-wide typical take-home. Your contract, tax treatment and benefits decide the real figure. For a foreign employee in China, estimate the income tax on your package with our expat income tax calculator.
- Payback measures money, not life. Promotion speed, equity, a partner's income, and how often you can get home are not in the arithmetic, and they are usually why people move anyway.
- Some cities get no verdict at all. Where a typical take-home can't be sourced, the tool says so instead of guessing. Jingdezhen, for instance, runs on small workshops and online sales; there is no median to quote.
Leave the four one-time cost boxes empty and there is no payback figure either. The tool will not invent a deposit for you. That is deliberate: the flights and the first month are the part nobody else can price. Eligibility is the other thing it cannot price. Whether you can work, study, or simply stay in China depends on a visa class and a permit that have to be in place before any of these numbers apply, and no cost arithmetic settles that. The visa and residence permit guide walks through the process.
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Questions people actually ask
Quick answers
Is the take-home pay before or after tax?
After tax. The tool uses monthly take-home pay because that is the number you live on. If you're comparing offers, make sure both are net, not gross.
What counts as 'all-in' monthly cost?
Rent plus a single person's routine living costs: groceries, utilities, transport, phone, and a small social/dining allowance. It does not include debt payments, childcare, private school, or flights home.
Why do I have to enter my own salary?
Because a move is only affordable relative to what you earn. A $2,000 apartment is cheap on a San Francisco salary and impossible on a Kunming salary. The tool does not apply any judgment until you give it your real number.
What does 'months to break even' mean?
It estimates how many months of after-tax savings in the new city it would take to recover the upfront cost of moving (flights, deposits, visa fees, shipping). It's a sanity check, not a prediction.
Why are some cities marked 'no wage'?
Those cities had enough cost data to compare, but I could not verify a reliable individual take-home figure. Jingdezhen, for example, runs on small workshops and online sales, so there is no typical salary to quote.
Does this include costs for a family?
No. The calculator is built for one adult. Add schooling, childcare, larger housing, and health insurance if you're moving with others.
Are the rent figures city center or suburbs?
City center, unless the city guide specifically says otherwise. Center-city rent is the easiest benchmark to compare across cities, but your actual neighborhood may cost less.
Can I trust a comparison if I've never lived there?
Use it to shortlist. The numbers come from sourced city guides, but they can't know your commute, your diet, or your social life. Read the guide and talk to people who live there.
Where do the numbers come from?
Every figure is pulled from this site's sourced city guides, where public data (Wise, Numbeo, Livingcost.org, government statistics, local news) is cross-checked and footnoted at the foot of each city article. The calculator does no estimating of its own; it just lines up numbers already verified on the city page. If a figure can't be traced to a named source, it isn't shown here.
Why might these figures differ from other cost-of-living sites?
Most aggregators blend self-reported user submissions into an index. This site instead builds each city from published, footnoted sources and states its limits openly, including where a number is a conservative floor rather than a measurement. The two methods produce different numbers. Where the two disagree, check the original source.
Can I compare two cities that aren't to or from China?
This tool is built for moves to or from China, so World to China or China to China. To compare the equivalent salary between any two cities, including two cities abroad or two outside China, use the Salary Equivalent Calculator. It runs on the same sourced figures and works for any pair.