TTDI Affordability Index — methodology
The figures are TTDI editorial estimates of typical daily spend, grounded in cited sources and reviewed under TTDI's audit gates — not surveyed prices.
The ranked metric
Each city is ranked by its midrange daily spend in USD — what a typical traveler spends per day on lodging, food, and local transit — taken from the city's published cost-per-day guide. We rank a single disclosed metric rather than a weighted blend: blend weights would be editorial inventions, and one defensible number beats four invented ones. Budget and luxury tiers display as context and never affect rank.
Where the figures come from
The figures are TTDI editorial estimates of typical daily spend, grounded in cited sources and reviewed under TTDI's audit gates — not surveyed prices. Treat them as a considered editorial read of each city's cost level, comparable across the whole universe because the same method produced every figure.
Currency
All figures are expressed in USD as published in each city's guide. Rankings do not currently re-normalize for day-to-day exchange-rate movement; when a rates source covers every ranked city's currency, editions will refresh quarterly with live-currency normalization and the change will be disclosed here.
The universe
Each edition ranks every city TTDI covered at the moment the edition was cut — the cities whose pages we publish and stand behind. The universe size is stated on every edition; an edition is never cut over fewer than 12 qualifying cities. As coverage grows, later editions rank more cities.
How ranks are assigned
Ranks are competition-style: cities with equal values share a rank, and the next distinct value resumes at its ordinal position (1, 2, 2, 4). We never separate tied cities alphabetically — a tie is reported as a tie.
Editions are frozen
Every edition is a frozen snapshot: once published, its ranking never changes, so a citation of this edition stays accurate. Updates ship as new editions at their own URLs; prior years remain available.