The most expensive cities in South Africa

·26 Apr 2016

New data compiled by expat pricing database Expatistan reveals which South African cities have the highest cost of living in the country.

The index’s values are determined by assigning a value of 100 to a central reference city – which is Prague for Expatistan – and then pricing other cities in the database, comparing their cost of living to the cost of living in Prague.

In other words, if a city has a Price Index of 134, that means that living there is 34% more expensive than living in Prague.

The index covers 21 South African cities – six of which come in above the index standard, and the rest coming in below.

Most expensive cities in South Africa

#	City	Index score
1	Richards Bay	119
2	Bhisho	115
3	Pietermaritzburg	111
4	Rustenburg	109
5	Johannesburg	107
6	Witbank	101
7	Queenstown	97
8	Cape Town	93
9	Port Elizabeth	90
10	Pretoria	87
11	Vereeniging	87
12	Welkom	86
13	Nelspruit	85
14	Durban	84
15	Potchefstroom	82
16	George	80
17	Soweto	78
18	Bloemfontein	76
19	Tembisa	74
20	Newcastle	74
21	Worcester	74

The data is meant to provide a guideline for expats moving to different cities across the world, and therefore does not take purchasing power parity into account.

This caveat makes it difficult to use the data to compare cost of living across different international cities.

However, in the global ranking, South Africa’s major metros – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban – are all ranked among the least expensive cities in the world.

Joburg is ranked 192nd most expensive out of 268 cities listed, followed by Cape Town (222), Pretoria (234) and Durban (240).

Zurich, Switzerland was ranked as the most expensive city in the world with an index score of 286, with Chişinău, Moldova ranked as the cheapest, with an index score of 53.