Comparison · all eight destinations · official statistics only
Cheapest country to live in Europe
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
The one comparison that is genuinely like-for-like
EU27 average = 100. 2025 values are preliminary. Lower is cheaper. The second column is the same index restricted to housing and utilities, and the gap between the two columns is where this table earns its place.
| Destination | Overall price level | Housing and utilities | What the gap tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greece | 84 | 76.6 | Housing is relatively cheaper than the country overall — it moves 1 place down the housing ranking. |
| Portugal | 85.3 | 81.1 | Housing is relatively cheaper than the country overall — it moves 1 place down the housing ranking. |
| Spain | 91.1 | 98.1 | Housing is relatively cheaper than the country overall — it moves 2 places down the housing ranking. |
| Malta | 95.8 | 73 | Housing is relatively more expensive than the country overall — it moves 3 places up the housing ranking. |
| Italy | 98 | 91.4 | Housing is relatively more expensive than the country overall — it moves 1 place up the housing ranking. |
| France | 106.4 | 120.7 | Housing is relatively cheaper than the country overall — it moves 2 places down the housing ranking. |
| Germany | 109.1 | 113.9 | Housing costs about what everything else does here. |
| Austria | 119 | 113.4 | Housing is relatively more expensive than the country overall — it moves 2 places up the housing ranking. |
Source: Eurostat, purchasing power parities and price level indices, dataset prc_ppp_ind_1, reference year 2025, EU27 = 100. 2025 values are preliminary.
⚠️ Read the housing column carefully — especially Malta
Malta comes out cheapest of the eight on housing, at 73 — and that number will mislead you if you take it at face value. The Eurostat category bundles rent together with water, electricity and gas, and Malta subsidises its energy tariffs heavily. A large part of that low score is cheap power, not cheap shelter. Malta's own housing authority publishes no national rent figure at all, only medians for individual localities, and for someone arriving to rent on the open market it is not a cheap housing market.
There is no way around this in the data. We checked all 64 categories Eurostat publishes and there is no rent-only or shelter-only index — the only sub-category beneath housing is energy itself, so the energy effect cannot even be subtracted out. Eurostat also notes that for countries with thin rental markets it estimates housing from dwelling-stock volumes rather than from observed rents, and it does not publish which countries those are. Treat the column as directional, and never as a rent comparison.
The genuinely useful finding in that column is at the other end. France is the most expensive of the eight for housing at 120.7, while ranking only 6th overall. If you are moving somewhere to rent or buy rather than to shop, that gap matters more than the headline.
What each government actually publishes
This is the part no comparison site shows you, because it is where the tidy grid falls apart. Below is what each national statistical office publishes for its own country — and where it publishes nothing. We record 8 verified absences across these eight, each one checked against the office rather than filled in from an aggregator.
| Destination | National rent figure | National price per m² |
|---|---|---|
| Greece | None published | None published |
| Portugal | Published | Published |
| Spain | Published | Published |
| Malta | None published | None published |
| Italy | Published | None published |
| France | None published | Published |
| Germany | Published | Published |
| Austria | Published | Published |
Country by country, with what each figure actually measures
Deliberately NOT a table. These figures sit on incompatible bases and putting them in columns would invite exactly the comparison they cannot support — so each is shown with its own scope, period and source, and the absences are shown as findings rather than blanks.
Greece
No national rent figure is published.
No Greek official body publishes a residential rent level in euros.
⚠️ Every euro rent figure for Greece in circulation traces to Spitogatos or a similar listings index.
Checked at ELSTAT / Bank of Greece — Verified absence — checked ELSTAT statistical products and Bank of Greece real-estate statistics
No national price per m² is published.
No Greek official body publishes a residential purchase price in euros per square metre.
⚠️ Widely-quoted Greek €/m² figures such as 'Athens South €4,167/m²' are asking prices from listings portals, not official statistics. The Ministry of Finance objective values are administrative tax assessments deliberately below market, with no national aggregate — not a market price.
Checked at Bank of Greece / ELSTAT — Verified absence — Bank of Greece indices of residential property prices; ELSTAT publishes no residential property price product
Portugal
9.46 € per m² per month · national · 2026-Q1
NEW LEASE CONTRACTS ONLY — registered contract rent, not asking rent, and not what a sitting tenant pays. Derived from Autoridade Tributária stamp-duty 'Modelo 2' contract notifications, legally mandatory, linked to the IMI property register for dwelling characteristics.
INE Portugal — Estatísticas de Rendas da Habitação ao nível local — 1.º trimestre de 2026 (published 26 June 2026)
17.42 € per m² per month · capital · 2026-Q1
Same basis as the national figure — median rent per m² of new lease contracts from stamp-duty declarations linked to the IMI register, utilities excluded. Scope is the municipality of Lisboa, not the Lisbon metropolitan area..
INE Portugal — Estatísticas de Rendas da Habitação ao nível local — 1.º trimestre de 2026
2,337 € per m² · national · 2026-Q1
ACTUAL TRANSACTION PRICES. Median price per square metre across the 35,953 dwellings transacted in Q1 2026, from Autoridade Tributária IMT property-transfer-tax assessments linked to the IMI register for floor area.
INE Portugal — Estatísticas de Preços da Habitação ao nível local — 1.º trimestre de 2026 / Statistics on House Prices at Local Level, 1st quarter of 2026 (INE, published 17 July 2026)
5,292 € per m² · capital · 2026-Q1
Median IMT transaction price per m², municipality of Lisboa, Q4 2025. Same administrative source and area definition as the national figure..
INE Portugal — Estatísticas de Preços da Habitação ao nível local — 1.º trimestre de 2026 / Statistics on House Prices at Local Level, 1st quarter of 2026 (INE, published 17 July 2026)
No national rent figure is published.
INE publishes no median or mean total monthly rent in euros.
⚠️ Any Portuguese 'average rent per month in euros' in circulation is either a listings-portal figure or someone multiplying €9.46 by an assumed floor area. Do not do that multiplication.
Checked at INE Portugal — Verified absence — Estatísticas de Rendas da Habitação, technical note and portal indicator list
Spain
600 € per month · national · 2024
MEDIAN monthly rent from TAX RECORDS — the tax agency's exploitation of declared rental income on habitual-residence lettings. Registered and declared contract rent, not asking rent and not a survey.
Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana — SERPAVI, with the Agencia Tributaria, Eustat and the Instituto de Estadística de Navarra — SERPAVI 2026 — Sistema Estatal de Referencia del Precio del Alquiler de Vivienda (reference year 2024)
8.2 € per m² per month · national · 2024
Same SERPAVI tax-record source and the same caveats as the €600/month row: median declared rent per square metre for habitual-residence lettings of flats, excluding charges. Denominator is superficie construida (built area), NOT habitable area..
Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana — SERPAVI — SERPAVI 2026, Tabla 1
2,315.7 € per m² · national · 2026-Q1
APPRAISAL VALUE, not a transaction price. Mean appraised value per square metre of free-market housing (vivienda libre), compiled from valuations produced by appraisal companies belonging to the Asociación Española de Análisis de Valor.
Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana — Estadística de Valor Tasado de Vivienda — Valor tasado de la vivienda, cross-checked against Banco de España, Indicadores del mercado inmobiliario 1.5 (table dated 30 July 2026)
Malta
800 € per month · San Pawl il-Baħar (St Paul's Bay) · 2024-H1
Registered contract rent from the statutory rent register under the Private Residential Leases Act (Cap. 604), where registration is legally mandatory.
Housing Authority (Malta) — Registered Rental Contracts in Malta: 2024 H1 (Malta Housing Authority), Figure 11
No national rent figure is published.
Not published at national level. NSO Malta publishes no residential rent level of any kind; its only rent measure is the HICP actual-rentals component, an index.
⚠️ Do not average the locality figures into a national 'Malta rent' — that would invent a figure the Housing Authority has never published.
Checked at NSO Malta / Housing Authority — Verified absence — NSO Malta publishes no rent statistics; Housing Authority reports publish locality medians and distribution bands only
No national price per m² is published.
Neither Maltese official body publishes a residential price in euros per square metre, and Malta does not publish an average price per dwelling either.
⚠️ The figures circulating for Malta — around €3,300/m², or an average price near €308,000 — are not NSO outputs. The first is an agency estimate and the second is a third party dividing aggregate declared value by transaction count. That division is unsafe in any case: a single deed can cover more than one property, and declared value is a duty valuation rather than a market price. NSO publishes contract counts and an aggregate value, but no average price per dwelling as such.
Checked at NSO Malta / Central Bank of Malta — Verified absence — NSO Residential Property Price Index (index only) and Residential Property Transactions (counts and aggregate value only); Central Bank of Malta property price indices (index only)
Italy
423 € per month · national · 2024
MEAN monthly rent actually paid, reported by tenant households in ISTAT's household budget survey (roughly 32,500 households, continuous monthly fieldwork). Covers the 18.0% of Italian households — about 4.7 million — that rent, across ALL contract types including free-market, canone concordato or agevolato, and public or social tenancies.
ISTAT — Le spese per i consumi delle famiglie — Anno 2024 (published 7 October 2025)
79 € per m² per year · national · 2025
REGISTERED LEASE CONTRACTS — derived from lease registration records held by the tax agency, covering just over one million dwellings leased in 2025 (about 7% of the potentially available stock), 87 million m² in total. Published as ANNUAL rent per unit of surface.
Agenzia delle Entrate — Osservatorio del Mercato Immobiliare — Rapporto Immobiliare 2026 — Il settore residenziale
No national price per m² is published.
No official national €/m² purchase price level exists.
⚠️ Dividing OMI's national turnover by its transacted floor area to manufacture a €/m² would be an invention, not a measurement. Do not do it.
Checked at ISTAT and Agenzia delle Entrate / OMI — Verified absence — checked both offices
France
24.2 € per m² per month · capital · 2024
MEDIAN rent actually paid by ALL sitting private-sector tenants — ongoing leases as well as new ones — collected by the local rent observatory network from landlords, letting agents and tenants. Not asking rents.
ANIL / réseau des Observatoires locaux des loyers, under the Ministère du Logement — Les loyers du parc privé en France — édition 2026
6.76 € per m² per month · social-housing · 2025-01-01
Administrative CENSUS, not a survey: an AGGREGATE RATIO — total rent billed divided by total habitable surface of the 4,906,200 dwellings LET at 1 January 2025 — rather than a mean of per-dwelling rates. Social and subsidised sector only..
SDES (Ministère de la Transition écologique) — Répertoire du parc locatif social — 5,4 millions de logements locatifs sociaux en France au 1er janvier 2025
4,903 € per m² · national · 2026-Q1
MEAN reservation price per square metre for NEW-BUILD dwellings sold off-plan to private individuals by property developers, in programmes of five or more units. The ECLN methodology defines the price verbatim as 'prix à la réservation TTC du logement, hors frais de notaire et frais divers' — that is, VAT INCLUDED, excluding notary and other fees, with parking excluded from the price where it forms part of the lot.
SDES (Service des données et études statistiques, Ministère de la Transition écologique) — Enquête sur la commercialisation des logements neufs (ECLN), données nationales trimestrielles brutes
No national rent figure is published.
No CURRENT official national private-sector rent level is published, in either euros per month or euros per square metre.
⚠️ The Ministry's 'carte des loyers' covers every French commune and looks official, but it is built from 9.1 million SeLoger and leboncoin ADVERTISEMENTS and its indicators are supplied charges comprises — doubly non-comparable, being both asking rents and charges-inclusive. Never use it.
Checked at INSEE / SDES — Verified absence — no official measured national private-sector rent level exists
No national price per m² is published.
The Indices Notaires-INSEE des prix des logements anciens are constant-quality INDICES (base 100) measuring price change only; INSEE publishes no €/m² level at any geography.
⚠️ Every national €/m² for the French EXISTING stock in circulation (typically around €3,873 for apartments and €2,276 for houses) is computed by a private reuser of DVF data, not published by DGFiP or Etalab. Do not cite those as official. Do not substitute the new-build ECLN figure either — it is a different market.
Checked at INSEE — Verified absence for the EXISTING stock — INSEE publishes an index only, never a price level
Germany
598 € per month · national · 2022
Bruttokaltmiete (gross cold rent) — net cold rent plus cold ancillary costs paid to the landlord: building maintenance, waste collection, common-area electricity, caretaker, chimney sweep, property tax, building insurance. EXCLUDES heating, hot water and all consumption-based utilities.
Destatis — Mikrozensus-Zusatzerhebung zur Wohnsituation 2022 (Zusatzprogramm Wohnen), Endergebnisse
8.6 € per m² per month · national · 2022
Bruttokaltmiete per square metre per month — gross cold rent, that is net cold rent plus cold ancillary costs, excluding heating and hot water. Contracted rent, survey of occupied dwellings, tenant households..
Destatis — Endergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2022 — Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder, gemeinsames Statistikportal
2,260 € per m² · national · 2023
MEAN price per square metre for a USED owner-occupied apartment (gebrauchte Eigentumswohnung). Built from the Kaufpreissammlungen — the purchase-price registers of the statutory valuation committees (Gutachterausschüsse), to which every notary is legally obliged to transmit every notarised purchase contract under § 195 BauGB.
BBSR (Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung) with the Arbeitskreis der Oberen Gutachterausschüsse (AK OGA) — Immobilienmarktbericht Deutschland — Auswertung 2023
Austria
695.1 € per month · national · 2026-Q1
Miete inklusive Betriebskosten — rent actually paid to the property manager including operating costs and statutory VAT, but EXCLUDING heating and hot water and excluding garage or parking. Contracted rent from a continuous household sample survey of roughly 20,000 households per quarter, main-tenancy dwellings with net rent above zero, grossed up to 1,817,000 dwellings.
Statistik Austria — Mikrozensus-Wohnungserhebung, Wohnkosten Q1 2026 (Pressemitteilung 14 206-125/26)
10.5 € per m² per month · national · 2026-Q1
Miete inklusive Betriebskosten per square metre per month, including VAT, excluding heating and hot water. Main-tenancy dwellings, contracted rent, survey..
Statistik Austria — Mikrozensus-Wohnungserhebung, Wohnkosten Q1 2026, Tabelle 1
4,162 € per m² · national · 2025
MEDIAN price per square metre of living space for owner-occupied apartments (Eigentumswohnungen). Actual transaction prices paid by private households, read from purchase contracts recorded in the land register (Grundbuch) — not asking prices.
Statistik Austria — Immobilien-Durchschnittspreise 2025, Sonderauswertung, Tabelle 2 (Pressemitteilung 14 186-105/26)
5,212 € per m² · capital · 2025
MEDIAN price per square metre of living space for owner-occupied apartments in Vienna. Land-register transaction prices, revalued to 2025 by regression over 2021–2025 transactions..
Statistik Austria — Immobilien-Durchschnittspreise 2025, Sonderauswertung, Tabelle 2
Greece and Malta publish neither. Greece's ministerial decisions and the Bank of Greece are silent on rent levels — the Bank publishes a rent index with no euro value, and the household budget survey reports a housing group that bundles water, electricity and maintenance across owners and renters alike. Malta's statutory rent register exists and is complete, but its reports give medians by locality and bedroom count, never a national figure.
France publishes no national private rent at all. Its rent observatory network covers 67 urban areas and deliberately declines to publish a national aggregate, giving only a range. The one genuinely national French rent figure describes social housing, which an arriving expatriate cannot access.
And the offices that do publish are not measuring the same thing. Germany's rent comes from a survey run once every four years, so the newest figure is 2022, while Austria publishes quarterly. Spain's national figure excludes two of its regions outright. Portugal publishes only a rate per square metre for newly signed contracts, which is what a newcomer pays rather than what sitting tenants pay. Italy publishes two official rent measures on bases that cannot be reconciled with each other, let alone with anyone else's.
The one cost that does not change with the country
Everything above varies, often by a factor of three, and frequently cannot even be compared. Health cover is the exception. Ours is priced from a single EU-region rate card, so the premium is the same whether you settle in Greece or Austria — from $721 a year, set by age rather than by destination.
What does change by country is what your certificate has to say. Greece names a figure, Spain tests whether your insurer is registered locally, Germany tests equivalence with its statutory system, Austria tests where claims are paid. A policy that satisfies one can be refused by another with no change to its benefits — see the rules compared for what each of the eight actually tests.
If you are still choosing, the destination matcher ranks the eight by what they ask you to earn, the visa finder lists every long-stay route, and years to permanent residency shows how long each country makes you wait. For prices by exact age, see the calculator.
Covered Abroad is an insurance introducer, not an insurer. We cannot extend cover beyond the policy wording. Cost figures on this page come from Eurostat and the eight national statistical offices, each dated and linked. They are published for comparison and are not financial advice. We log changes as we find them on updates.