Sources Policy

Last updated: 11 October 2026

Placeivo exists to give people moving, studying or working abroad numbers they can trust. This page sets out which sources we use, how we rank them and what we will not use. How we turn source data into the figures on a page is explained in our methodology.

1. How we rank sources

Tier 1 – official statistics. National statistics offices (for example the UK Office for National Statistics), Eurostat, central banks and international bodies such as the World Bank. These are the only sources we use for the headline cost, rent, income and salary figures on a city page.

Tier 2 – authoritative open data. Well-maintained open datasets such as Open-Meteo (weather and climate), OpenStreetMap and Wikidata (place names, coordinates and basic facts). We use these for context, location and descriptive details, not for cost or income figures.

Tier 3 – single releases and tables. Specific tables or bulletins from an official body that we have entered by hand from the published file. They carry the same authority as the publisher but are checked again whenever a new release appears.

2. What we do not use for headline figures

• Crowd-sourced price surveys and user-submitted prices.
• Listings scraped from property or job websites.
• Figures from blogs, news articles or other comparison sites, unless they lead us to the original official source, which we then cite directly.
• AI-generated or estimated numbers.

3. What every figure must carry

A value appears on a city page only when we have recorded: the publishing organisation, the dataset or table, the place it covers, the period it refers to, and the date we retrieved it. Each city page shows these in its “Sources & dates” panel with a link to the original dataset.

4. National versus city data

Many official indicators exist only for a whole country. When we show one on a city page, it is labelled national. We do not present a country average as if it described one city.

5. When sources disagree

If two official sources give different values for the same thing, we prefer the one that is closer to the city (city over region, region over country), measured on the most comparable basis, and most recent. Where a difference matters to readers, we explain it on the page rather than hide it.

6. Independence

No organisation pays to be listed, ranked or described on Placeivo, and advertising or affiliate partners have no say over data or rankings. Any affiliate link will be clearly labelled.

7. Suggest a source

If you know an official dataset we should use for a city or country, send the link through our contact page.