Geo-Parity
Cost of living, fair global pay, healthcare costs, nomad visas and tax residency.
Community: Submitted by a user or imported; check the owner before granting accessOnlineNo sign-inGlobalFreeRead-only
What it can do
What data it sees
Do you need an account
No: the server works without sign-in
Cost of living, fair global pay, healthcare costs, nomad visas and tax residency. Free, no key.
Server tool list (59)
Raw names from tools/list. Only developers need these.
| compare_total_cost | What a month actually costs in each of 41 countries on a stated income, and what is left over. Sums four lines that are kept from overlapping: rent (measured Eurostat city rents, HUD Fair Market Rents, or the price basket where neither covers a country), the everyday basket EXCLUDING rent (the basket normally contains rent — roughly half of it — so adding a separate housing figure to the full basket would overstate a total by ~60%), out-of-pocket healthcare, and income tax plus employee social contributions on that income. VAT is already inside the basket prices (purchasing-power data derives from surveyed purchaser prices) and is therefore never added. Tax assumes you become tax-resident and are taxed locally, single filer, no deductions; special regimes such as Portugal's IFICI are reported separately where they would be cheaper. Estimates for comparison — not a quote and not tax advice. |
| calculate_ppp | Given a US-denominated annual income and a target country code, returns the effective local purchasing power (income / pppIndex), the lifestyle equilibrium cost (income * pppIndex), and the purchasing power ratio (1 / pppIndex). Figures use real PPP data (World Bank, IMF, OECD, Penn World Table) relative to a US baseline of 1.0. |
| localize_salary | Convert a base salary from a home country into a cost-of-living-fair local equivalent: S_local = S_base × (I_target / I_home), where I is a US-relative price level. Omit `target` to receive a localized salary matrix across every country in the source — useful for pricing one offer across many markets. Returns USD purchasing-power equivalents, not currency-converted amounts. |
| calculate_wage_bands | Models a country's wage distribution as log-normal, calibrated from World Bank GNI per capita (mean) and the Gini index (spread: sigma = sqrt(2)*normInv((Gini+1)/2)), then returns the survival floor (essentials), statutory minimum (ILOSTAT where available, else curated; null where none exists), median (p50), comfortable (p75), top 10% (p90) and top 1% (p99) bands — each monthly and annual, USD and local currency. Optional `salary` locates a pay figure on the curve (percentile + out-earns %); `percentile` returns that exact threshold wage. Model estimates for benchmarking, not payroll data. |
| compare_occupation_pay | MEASURED gross monthly earnings of employees by ISCO-08 major occupation group, from ILOSTAT — median and mean, in USD, PPP dollars and local currency, for 35 countries (a median is published for most of them). This is the site's only measured wage series; calculate_wage_bands is MODELLED, and the two are not interchangeable. Each row also carries the female-vs-male pay gap for that occupation (positive means women earn less; negative values are real and are kept) and where the occupation's median sits on the country's modelled national wage ladder. Employees only — excludes the self-employed and informal workers, which is why these diverge most from GNI-derived estimates in countries with large informal sectors. Before tax. The ten ISCO-08 major groups are broad families of work, not job titles: one group covers a surgeon and a junior developer alike. Countries with no ILO data return NO_DATA rather than a modelled substitute. |
| build_pay_range | Returns a floor, midpoint and ceiling salary for a broad occupation and seniority in a country, anchored on ILO's measured earnings where they exist and on the modelled national wage ladder where they do not — `basis` says which. Built for the employer side of pay transparency: since 7 June 2026 the EU Pay Transparency Directive has required a starting salary or pay range in the job advert. IT IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE AND DOES NOT CERTIFY COMPLIANCE — it is a market range from official statistics, and every response carries a `caveats` array saying so, which should be reproduced alongside any figure quoted from it. Seniority is applied as a percentile offset within the country's own distribution rather than a fixed multiplier, so the same level means the same position locally rather than the same ratio. The gender pay gap for the occupation is reported beside the range and never folded into it. ISCO-08 major groups are broad families of work, not job titles. |
| check_schengen | Validate a set of trips against the Schengen Area rule: a non-EU visitor may be present at most 90 days within any rolling 180-day window. Entry and exit days both count as days of presence; overlapping trips are de-duplicated. Returns days used in the current window, days remaining, an overall compliance flag, and the exact first overstay date (if any). |
| find_meeting_slot | Given a set of cities/timezones and each participant's local working hours, find the longest UTC window where everyone is simultaneously within their working day (DST-accurate), AND score the team's overall timezone friction. Returns the overlap in UTC and in each participant's local time (or null with the best partial coverage), plus a `friction` block: a 0–100 score, grade (Effortless/Manageable/Strained/Broken), daily shared hours, coverage, and the `loneWolf` — the member whose removal would free the most team overlap. Useful for scheduling and for hiring/team-composition decisions. |
| compare_contract | Compute gross-to-net parity between a self-employed contractor hourly rate and an employee (W2/EOR) hourly rate, accounting for self-employment/income tax and self-paid health insurance, and return the break-even contractor rate. Uses transparent effective-rate tax presets per country, all overridable. Estimates only — not tax advice. |
| select_region | Given a user-population breakdown, find the cloud host region that minimizes population-weighted round-trip latency (argmin_j Σ_i P_i × L_ij), and compute the optimal multi-region split (each user region routed to its nearest host). Latency is estimated from great-circle distance via a fibre-propagation model, not measured. |
| compare_countries | Side-by-side comparison of two countries: US-relative price levels across every dataset (World Bank, IMF, OECD, Penn World Table, consumption basket), the consensus ratio, percent difference, and $100k salary equivalence in both directions. |
| required_rate | Given a desired annual net income, compute the freelance hourly and day rate required after taxes, self-paid health insurance, weeks off, and billable utilization. Uses the same per-country effective-rate presets as compare_contract; all overridable. Estimates only — not tax advice. |
| check_residency | Count distinct days of presence per country per calendar year and evaluate the generic 183-day rule, the US Substantial Presence Test (weighted 3-year formula), and the UK 183-day tax-year test. Early-warning day counter — not tax advice. |
| check_travel_residency | The comprehensive engine: from one travel itinerary it returns (1) Schengen 90/180 tourist-visa status (days used/remaining, first overstay, longest compliant stay), (2) per-country tax-residency risk on each country's OWN threshold and basis — the 183-day rule, Cyprus's conditional 60-day rule (flagged only when you're not 183+ resident elsewhere), the US Substantial Presence Test and the UK tax-year test — with safe days left, leave-by dates and a safe/warning/triggered rating, and (3) with an optional income, the tax cost of triggering residency at the standard rate vs an expat regime. Supersedes check_schengen / check_residency / check_tax_residency_risk (all still available). Early-warning day math — not tax advice. |
| find_fire_locations | Geo-arbitrage FIRE analysis: given a portfolio and safe withdrawal rate, returns every country where the passive income sustains a lean ($32k US-equivalent/yr), comfortable ($55k), upper ($90k), or luxury ($150k) lifestyle at local purchasing-power prices — plus FIRE numbers per tier, nomad-visa income-floor eligibility, local-currency income, an SWR sensitivity band, (with savings/coast params) years until each country unlocks, and — where covered — a `statePension` overlay with the OECD net pension replacement rate (safety net from pension age; not subtracted from the FIRE numbers). Estimates only — not financial advice. |
| estimate_micro_costs | Estimates local prices for a 32-item everyday basket (rent, pint of beer, groceries, transport, gym, …) in two countries, derived as usPrice × pppIndex^elasticity — non-tradables like rent swing harder across borders than world-priced goods like petrol (Balassa-Samuelson-style model). Returns per-item prices in USD and local currency, category subtotals, and a single-person monthly budget rollup. Model estimates, not price quotes. |
| check_tax_residency_risk | Remote Worker Tax Trap radar: evaluates how close a stay is to triggering tax residency (183-day rule with per-country variations across 43 tax jurisdictions) and estimates the tax owed on the FULL annual income if the threshold is crossed — comparing the standard resident effective rate against the country's special expat/nomad regime (Spain's Beckham Law 24%, Portugal's IFICI 20%, Italy's impatriati, territorial/remittance systems, …). Optionally computes leave-by/residency dates from an arrival date and warns where the Schengen 90/180 tourist limit bites first. Early-warning estimates — not tax advice. |
| rank_livability | Quality-of-Life vs Cost matrix: ranks 41 countries by a user-weighted composite of livability metrics (median broadband Mbps, safety, healthcare, air quality, English usability — curated country-level data replacing the discontinued Teleport API) against the monthly cost of single-person essentials at local purchasing-power prices. Returns per-country composite and value scores, lifestyle label for your budget (comfortable → like royalty), nomad-visa eligibility, and days-to-tax-residency. Curated estimates — verify locally. |
| compare_healthcare | Healthcare cost and financial exposure across 41 countries: out-of-pocket spend per person per year (US$), out-of-pocket as a share of all health spending, total health spend per capita (PPP international $), government funding share, physicians per 1,000 and dentists per 10,000. Figures are MEASURED from World Bank and WHO Global Health Observatory series, never derived from a price index: scaling healthcare by a country's general price level overstates costs abroad by 1.2x-5.4x, because health prices do not track the price level (the US is an outlier and several countries deliberately price healthcare below their own economies). Share and burden are separate facts and both are returned - the US pays only ~11% out of pocket, a low share, but the highest absolute amount. Dental is reported as ACCESS (dentist density), not price: no free citable source publishes procedure prices. National averages, not a quote for any individual's care. Not medical, insurance or financial advice. |
| compare_housing | Housing cost and affordability across countries, built for remote workers. Returns monthly rent plus TWO ratios that together answer the real question: rent as a share of the LOCAL median wage (are locals priced out?) and as a share of YOUR remote income (can you afford it?). The gap between them - `arbitrageGap`, in percentage points - is the single number saying whether a place is cheap FOR YOU; pass `remoteIncome` to get it. Also returns price-to-income and price-to-rent as a percentage of each country's OWN long-run average (OECD), and mortgage rates (ECB, euro area only; absent elsewhere rather than estimated). IMPORTANT: those affordability percentages compare a country with its own history, NOT with other countries - 127 for Spain means 27% less affordable than Spain's norm, not 27% dearer than Germany. Every rent carries `rentBasis`: 'measured' where a real Eurostat city figure exists (Spain, Portugal, Switzerland only) or 'modelled' from the site's price basket, which understates housing by up to ~40% where housing has decoupled from the general price level. National averages; not financial advice. |
| find_nomad_visas | Digital-nomad visa Income Matcher: given a monthly remote income (any currency) and household size, computes each program's real income threshold (base plus its published per-dependent uplift) and returns the programs you qualify for plus the near misses just out of reach — with duration, renewability, tax notes and official source URLs. Curated summaries — verify with the official source before applying. |
| passport_power | Passport Power: for a given country's passport, returns the visa-free-access score (visa-free + visa-on-arrival + eTA destinations), global rank and percentile among all ~199 passports, and the full destination breakdown by access type with names resolved. Omit country for the ranked league table. Reference data from the open ilyankou/passport-index-dataset (public domain) — confirm entry rules with the destination authority before travel. |
| calculate_runway | For founders/freelancers stretching savings: computes how many extra months of runway relocating to a cheaper hub buys. Burn is split into fixed (location-independent — subscriptions, debt, insurance) and local; only the local slice scales by the target's cost-of-living ratio (city-level where a curated hub is given, else national, incl. Factbook-only countries). Returns the home baseline plus each hub's monthly burn, runway months, extra months, run-out date and the ×multiplier. Estimates from purchasing-power data, not financial advice. |
| compare_connectivity | Measured connection quality per country from Cloudflare Radar: median download and upload (Mbps), median idle latency and jitter (ms), and a call-quality verdict derived from latency and jitter rather than bandwidth — a video call fails on latency and jitter long before it fails on throughput, which is why a download figure alone cannot answer “can I work from here”. Aggregated from real connections over a 28-day window, not crowdsourced or self-reported. Coverage is wider than the site's country pages (~200 locations), so this answers for places with no page here. A country Radar has too little data for is absent, never zero. |
| compare_public_holidays | Two questions in one. Given `countries` (two or more), returns the working days those places genuinely SHARE in a year — weekdays on which nobody is on a public holiday — which is the number a distributed team actually plans against and the half of the question timezone-overlap tools never answer: a London/Tokyo team loses roughly three working weeks a year to non-overlapping holidays. Without `countries`, ranks countries by nationwide public holidays. Weekend holidays are excluded (they cost nobody a working day) and regional holidays are counted separately from national ones. Covers 204 countries, but NOT India, Thailand, Malaysia, the UAE or Saudi Arabia — those return NO_DATA rather than an empty calendar, because “no data” and “no holidays” are opposite claims. |
| plan_team_calendar | When a distributed team can actually all work. Joins the two halves no free tool puts together: the weekdays on which NOBODY is on a public holiday (the engine behind compare_public_holidays) and the daily working-hour overlap across the members' time zones (the engine behind find_meeting_slot), evaluated on 15 January and 15 July so daylight-saving asymmetry is visible, and multiplied into conservative shared working hours per year. Members are ISO alpha-2 country codes; each country is placed in the time zone of its representative city, and countries spanning several zones (US, CA, BR, MX, AU, ID) are flagged `multiZone` — append `@IANA/Zone` to override (e.g. `US@America/Chicago`). Covers the 41-country spine EXCEPT India, Thailand, Malaysia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which have no published holiday calendar and return NO_DATA naming them rather than a calendar with no holidays. Working-hour windows are a stated assumption (09:00-18:00 local unless given), not a measurement; annual leave is not modelled. |
| estimate_employer_cost | What a hire actually costs the employer: the gross wage plus the employer's own social security contributions at the rate OECD Taxing Wages publishes (single earner, no children, 100% of the average wage), applied as a flat rate — the figure employer-of-record services quote for a fee. Pass `gross` (annual USD) for your own figure; without it the wage is the pay-range midpoint for the `occupation` and `seniority`, and `basis` says whether that wage is measured (ILOSTAT) or modelled. Employee-side rates and OECD's tax wedge are returned for context and never applied. Without `country`, ranks the spine by employer contribution rate. Coverage is the 25 spine countries OECD measures; the other sixteen return NO_DATA, never a 0% rate (New Zealand's 0% is real: it has no employer contributions). Every response carries caveats — contribution ceilings, excluded schemes — and it is not payroll or legal advice. |
| compare_working_time | Two questions in one. Given `countries` (two or more ISO alpha-2 codes), returns side by side: mean weekly hours actually worked per employed person (ILOSTAT, newest year from 2023), average annual hours actually worked (OECD, members only), and the paid leave the law gives mothers and fathers in calendar days with who pays (World Bank Women, Business and the Law 2026). Without `countries`, ranks the 41-country spine by one `metric` — weeklyHours, annualHours, maternityDays or paternityDays; `sort=fewest` inverts. A country missing a metric lacks the key, and is dropped from a ranking rather than scored zero. OECD's annual-hours series is NOT comparable across countries, by OECD's own statement — the wording travels with every response that carries the figure. Weekly hours average full- and part-time workers together. Leave is what the law provides, not take-up; a legal score below 1 marks a partial provision. Statutory minimum ANNUAL leave is deliberately absent: no citable structured source exists. |
| compare_inflation | What money earns or loses in real terms. Given `countries` (two or more ISO alpha-2 codes), returns side by side: consumer-price inflation (World Bank, latest annual, plus the IMF's monthly year-on-year figure where available), the central-bank policy rate (BIS, newest month; the ECB's single rate for euro-area members, flagged `viaEuroArea`), deposit and lending rates (World Bank, where published), and the real rates the engine computes from them by the exact Fisher relation — only when the nominal rate and the inflation figure are within a year of each other. Without `countries`, ranks the 41-country spine by one `metric`. A country missing a metric lacks the key and is dropped from a ranking, never scored 0. Real rates are ex post (last year's inflation), not expectations; a projection at the latest rate is flat, not a forecast. |
| remittance_cost | What it costs to send money from one country to another, from the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide survey (newest quarter, CC BY 4.0): the mean total cost — fee plus exchange-rate margin — of sending USD 200 and USD 500 across the providers surveyed on that corridor, the cheapest provider found, and how many were surveyed. With `amount` (USD), a quote at the nearer of the two surveyed bands (below USD 350 uses the 200 figures), and the response says which. Give `from` AND `to` for one corridor; only one of them for a ranking of surveyed corridors out of a sender or into a receiver, cheapest first. The survey covers ~350 high-volume corridors (~46 sending countries, ~96 receiving); a pair it does not survey returns NO_DATA, never a figure borrowed from a neighbour. Your own quote will differ by provider, payment method and day. |
| pension_abroad | A fixed pension paid from one country and spent in another, after the exchange rate, the destination's price level and the destination's inflation. Converts `amount` in `currency` at the site's FX snapshot, re-prices it at the destination through the PPP engine (the same price-level comparison as calculate_ppp), and projects it flat at the destination's latest annual inflation for `years` (1-40, default 10), returning what it is worth there today and after the period, in USD and local currency, with the share of purchasing power lost. Without `amount`, the origin's typical state pension is used — OECD's net replacement rate for an average earner on the modelled median wage — and `basis` says so; 33 origins have a rate, the rest need `amount`. Holds the pension and the exchange rate fixed and says so; many state pensions are uprated, and some are frozen for expatriates in particular countries. Not financial advice. |
| compare_banking_access | Whether adults there can bank: the share of adults (15+) with an account at a bank, another financial institution or a mobile-money provider, from the World Bank's Global Findex — a triennial household survey, so the survey year travels with each figure — plus personal remittances received as a share of GDP. Given `countries` (two or more), side by side; without, the 41-country spine ranked by `metric` (`account` or `remittancesReceived`). Account ownership says whether adults CAN bank, not whether a newcomer can open an account — that depends on residency and documentation rules this tool does not cover. A missing figure is absent and dropped from rankings, never 0. |
| compare_tax_rates | Statutory tax schedules from the OECD, compared or ranked. Given `countries` (two or more ISO alpha-2 codes), returns side by side the corporate income-tax rate (combined central plus average sub-national, central only, and a small-business rate where one exists; OECD Corporate Tax Statistics, all 41 spine countries) and, for OECD members, the top personal income-tax rate with the earnings threshold at which it starts as a multiple of the average wage, plus the marginal rate with employee social contributions at that point (OECD Tax Database, 26 of the spine). Without `countries`, ranks the spine by one `metric`. A country OECD's PIT flow does not cover has no `personal` block and is dropped from a PIT ranking, never scored 0. Rates are statutory, not effective: incentives, surtaxes and special regimes are outside the data, and this does not replace the blended take-home profiles behind `compare_contract`. Statutory figures for information only — not legal or tax advice; every response says so first. |
| legal_profile | The World Bank's Women, Business and the Law reading of each country's statute (2026 edition, 41 spine countries). Give `country` for one country: the Legal Frameworks index (0-100), eight topic scores (mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, pension), the coded answers grouped by topic — can a woman choose where to live, travel abroad, get a job the same way as a man, is equal pay for work of equal value mandated, can she obtain a divorce and head a household, own and inherit equally, open a business and access credit without discrimination — and the full, partial and mandatory retirement ages for men and women. Give `countries` (two or more) for the index, topics and ages side by side, or neither for the spine ranked by `metric` (`index`, a topic, `retirementAgeMen`, `retirementAgeWomen`). A partial answer keeps WBL's fraction as `{partial}` rather than rounding to yes or no; a true says the provision exists in law, not that it is enforced. Statutory figures for information only — not legal or tax advice; every response says so first. |
| compare_vat | Standard and reduced VAT/GST rates for the 41-country spine, hand-curated from each national tax authority's published page and served with that page's URL and the date it was checked, so a figure can be verified rather than trusted. Given `countries` (two or more ISO alpha-2 codes), returns each country's tax kind and name, standard rate, reduced rates where the authority lists them, registration threshold where known, and its source; an entry read from a secondary source because the authority's page could not be fetched is marked `confidence: "secondary"`. Without `countries`, ranks standard rates lowest first. Countries with no single national rate — the US (state sales taxes), Brazil (state and federal taxes in transition to a dual VAT) and Malaysia (sales and service tax) — are described by `kind`, excluded from the ranking and named in `excluded`, never given 0%. Reviewed at least yearly; not a live feed. Statutory figures for information only — not legal or tax advice; every response says so first. |
| travel_advice | What two governments say about going. Give `country` (ISO alpha-2) for one country: the UK FCDO's level (none, all-but-essential to parts, all-but-essential, all travel to parts, all travel) with its latest change and date, the FCDO's passport-validity and visa sentences for British citizens and the health risks it lists, and the US State Department's advisory level (1 exercise normal precautions to 4 do not travel) with its headline. Give `countries` (two or more) for the levels side by side, or neither for the 41-country spine ranked least-restricted first by FCDO level then US level (`sort=highest` inverts). The two governments grade differently and often disagree; neither is rescored. The FCDO publishes nothing for the UK and the State Department nothing for the US, so those blocks are absent with a caveat, never a made-up level, and a country with neither is excluded from the ranking. Official sources on the dates shown, for information only — conditions change; check the source before travelling. Every response says so first. |
| health_prep | What to sort out with a travel clinic, as facts from TravelHealthPro (NaTHNaC, the UK's national travel-health centre) with the source page linked per row: the yellow-fever certificate position (required for all arrivals, required when arriving from a risk country, or none), whether the country itself carries yellow-fever risk, the vaccine names recommended for most UK travellers and for some, and whether malaria guidance exists — plus the health-risk names the FCDO lists. Give `country` for one country or `countries` (two or more) for a side-by-side. Facts only, never NaTHNaC's prose; the reasoning is at the linked page. These are recommendations for UK travellers and depend on itinerary and medical history — a clinic decides for a person. The UK itself is NO_DATA (no FCDO page, so no link), never an empty list. Official sources on the dates shown, for information only — conditions change; check the source before travelling. Every response says so first. |
| compare_safety_stats | Measured danger once there. Given `countries` (two or more ISO alpha-2 codes), returns side by side: intentional homicides per 100,000 (UNODC via World Bank WDI) and mean annual PM2.5 exposure in µg/m³ (WDI), each with its observation year, and the INFORM disaster-risk score and band composed for context. Without `countries`, ranks the 41-country spine by one `metric` (`homicide` default, `pm25`), lowest first. Only observations at or after the newest WDI vintage are held; a country whose newest figure is older lacks the key and is dropped from the ranking, never scored 0 — the UK's newest homicide observation predates the floor, so it has no homicide figure here. Homicide counts intentional killings only, not petty crime or road deaths; PM2.5 is a national population-weighted mean. Official sources on the dates shown, for information only — conditions change; check the source before travelling. Every response says so first. |
| compare_pension_systems | What the state pension system looks like there, from OECD Pensions at a Glance (members and G20 partners, 33 of the 41 spine countries). Give `country` for one: normal retirement age now and for a 22-year-old entering today, by sex; net and gross replacement rates for a full-career average earner at 50/100/200% of the average wage under mandatory schemes; expected years after leaving work; the share of pensioners below half of median income; the average tax rate on an average pension; the old-age to working-age ratio and public pension spending; plus World Bank life expectancy and the 65+ share for all 41 — and WBL's statutory retirement age beside them, which stands alone for the eight countries OECD does not cover (no replacement rate is ever borrowed). Give `countries` (two or more) for a side-by-side, or neither for the spine ranked by `metric`. Projection rows (2060+) are excluded. A country missing a metric lacks the key and is dropped from a ranking, never scored 0. Published rules and modelled figures on the dates shown, for information only — entitlements depend on a person's record and consulates decide; every response says so first. |
| find_retirement_visas | Which of the 41 spine countries would let a retiree in, and on what terms — a hand-curated register of retiree, passive-income and deposit routes (kind), each with minimum age, monthly income or deposit threshold in its own currency, duration, renewability, a path-to-residency flag, the official page it was read from and the check date; an entry read from secondary reporting because the official site could not be fetched is marked `confidence: "secondary"`, and countries with no route are `kind: "none"` with a line saying why. Give `income` (monthly) with optional `currency`, `age` and `savings` for a match: routes the income reaches, near misses within 25%, deposit routes (judged only when `savings` is given — a pension says nothing about a fixed deposit), routes with no published figure, exclusions with the reason, and the countries with no route. Or `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side. Thresholds are compared in USD at the site's FX snapshot; dependants raise them. Published rules and modelled figures on the dates shown, for information only — entitlements depend on a person's record and consulates decide; every response says so first. |
| retire_on_budget | Does a fixed monthly pension cover a month of local essentials. Given `amount` and `currency` (default GBP 1,500), returns every spine country ranked by coverage — the pension in USD divided by the country's MODELLED monthly essentials (the site's price basket scaled by the PPP price level, checked against real series and wrong both ways) — with the essentials figure, healthcare out-of-pocket per person per month (World Bank / WHO), life expectancy (World Bank) and the kind of retiree visa the country offers beside each row. Coverage is an ordering, not a budget; the pension is taken as fixed at the site's FX snapshot. Different from `pension_abroad`, which re-prices a pension against the origin's price level to say what it is worth relative to home. Published rules and modelled figures on the dates shown, for information only — entitlements depend on a person's record and consulates decide; every response says so first. |
| compare_effective_tax | What a company's investment is actually taxed at: OECD's forward-looking effective average tax rate (EATR), effective marginal rate (EMTR) and cost of capital for a composite investment under fixed interest and inflation, beside the statutory combined corporate rate from the Rules hub, with the gap in points — what allowances and incentives are worth. `country` for one, `countries` for a side-by-side, neither ranks by `metric` (eatr default; emtr, costOfCapital, gap), lowest first unless `sort=highest`. 39 of the 41 spine countries are modelled; the Philippines and the UAE keep their statutory rate with a caveat and never a borrowed effective rate. A property of the tax system, not any company's bill. Published rates and facts on the dates shown, for information only — not tax, legal or immigration advice; every response says so first. |
| withholding_tax | What a company in `from` keeps back when it pays dividends, interest, royalties or technical fees to a recipient in `to`: OECD's standard withholding rates for the payer's country and, for the pair, the treaty rate where OECD publishes one, with the saving in points per income type. Direction is the payer's, never reversed; `from` equal to `to` is rejected. A pair with no published treaty rate reports the standard rate and says so — that is not the same as no treaty existing, and the treaty figure is the maximum the treaty allows (a residence certificate is usually needed). Without `from`, ranks all 41 by standard rate on `type` (dividends default). Standard rates for 41 of 41; treaty rates for about 1,300 payer–recipient pairs within the spine (the Philippines never appears as a payer). Published rates and facts on the dates shown, for information only — not tax, legal or immigration advice; every response says so first. |
| compare_business_entry | How long and how much it takes to register a limited company: World Bank B-READY's calendar days and cost to complete company entry for a domestic and a foreign-owned company (cost in local currency with a USD conversion at the site's FX snapshot), whether paid-in minimum capital is required, whether sectors are closed to full private ownership, whether a national-employee quota applies, and whether registration is online with an e-signature, fees payable online and a unique business id assigned — plus the World Bank Entrepreneurship Database's new limited-liability companies per 1,000 working-age adults. B-READY is a rotating cohort: 22 of the 41 spine countries are in the 2025 edition, and a country outside it answers with the new-company rate alone and a caveat naming the gap; a country with neither is NO_DATA. `country` for one, `countries` to compare, neither ranks by `metric` (daysDomestic default; costDomesticUsd, daysForeign, costForeignUsd, density). Published rates and facts on the dates shown, for information only — not tax, legal or immigration advice; every response says so first. |
| find_founder_visas | Which of the 41 spine countries would let a founder in, and on what terms — a hand-curated register of founder/start-up routes, investor routes and `kind: "none"` entries, each with its one published money figure and what it is for (`minFunds.basis`: an investment to make, subsistence funds to hold, or funding raised from investors), whether an endorsing body must approve the project, duration, renewability, a path-to-residency flag, the official page it was read from and the check date; an entry read from secondary reporting because the official site could not be fetched is marked `confidence: "secondary"`. Give `funds` with optional `currency` for a match: routes the funds reach, near misses within 25%, routes needing money raised from investors rather than held, routes with no published figure, exclusions with the reason, and the countries with no route. Or `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side. Thresholds are compared in USD at the site's FX snapshot; endorsement and business-plan tests are not modelled, and programmes pause and reprice. Published rates and facts on the dates shown, for information only — not tax, legal or immigration advice; every response says so first. |
| compare_health_capacity | How much health system there is per person: medical doctors and nursing and midwifery personnel per 10,000 (WHO Global Health Observatory) and hospital beds per 10,000 (WHO, or OECD where newer — the row names its source), beside the UHC service-coverage index. Density is not access: it says how much exists, not whether a visitor can use it or what it costs. Newest observation at the site's vintage floor; 36 of the 41 spine countries carry doctors and nurses, 31 beds; an older figure is absent, never served as current. `country` for one, `countries` to compare, neither ranks by `metric` (doctors default; nurses, beds), highest first unless `sort=lowest`. Published figures, for information only; every response says so first. |
| compare_childcare_cost | What full-time centre-based childcare costs a family after benefits and tax, from OECD's tax-benefit model (two children aged 2 and 3, no social assistance or rent supplement): a couple both earning 100% of the average wage and a single parent earning 67%, each as a share of household disposable income, of the average wage, and in local currency per year. OECD members only — 22 of the 41 spine countries at the vintage floor; the rest return NO_DATA naming the gap, never a modelled figure. `country` for one, `countries` to compare, neither ranks by `household` (couple default; singleParent) and `unit` (pctDisposableIncome default; pctAverageWage), cheapest first unless `sort=highest`. Published cost figures, for information only; every response says so first. |
| compare_trade_customs | How long goods take to clear the border and what compliance costs, from World Bank B-READY's International Trade topic (firm-survey averages in the largest business city): days for exported and imported goods to clear all border agencies, the typical cost of complying with export and import requirements as a share of goods value, and the share of firms exporting by parcel. B-READY is a rotating cohort — 22 of the 41 spine countries in the 2025 edition — and a country outside it is NO_DATA, never a borrowed figure. `country`, `countries`, or a ranking by `metric` (importDays default; exportDays, importCostPct, exportCostPct), lowest first unless `sort=highest`. Published rates and facts, for information only — not tax, legal or customs advice; every response says so first. |
| compare_tax_burden | How much work paying tax is, from World Bank B-READY's Taxation topic (firm surveys in the largest business city): median hours spent on tax compliance a year, the share of firms filing and paying electronically, weeks to a final audit report and to a VAT refund, the share citing a too-long refund process, the share of social-security taxes in labour cost, and the effective income-based rate firms REPORT paying — which is neither the statutory rate (Rules hub) nor OECD's modelled effective rate (Business hub's tax tab), and the caveat keeps the three apart. 22 of the 41 spine countries; outside the cohort is NO_DATA. `country`, `countries`, or a ranking by `metric` (complianceHours default; vatRefundWeeks, auditWeeks, reportedEffectiveRatePct), lowest first unless `sort=highest`. Published rates and facts, for information only — not tax or legal advice; every response says so first. |
| compare_egov | How much of government can be done online: the UN E-Government Development Index (0–1) and its three components — Online Service Index, Telecommunication Infrastructure Index, Human Capital Index — for all 41 spine countries, read from the UN E-Government Knowledgebase's country pages because no data file is published. The index measures what government provides online and the infrastructure and skills to use it, not whether a newcomer can use it (most services need a national id or residence first). The survey is biennial and the caveat names its year. `country`, `countries`, or a ranking by `index` (egdi default; osi, tii, hci), highest first unless `sort=lowest`. Published figures, for information only; every response says so first. |
| property_rules | Whether a foreigner may buy residential property in each of the 41 spine countries: an ownership band (`free`, `restricted`, `leasehold-only`, `prohibited`), the main restrictions in a sentence, whether land itself may be owned, and the headline transfer tax a buyer pays with a note on surcharges and fees — a hand-curated register with the official page and check date per row; an entry read from secondary reporting because the official page could not be fetched is marked `confidence: "secondary"`. `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side; without either, all 41 ranked free-first then by transfer tax, optionally within one `band`. Rules change by decree and by region (Canada's ban runs to 2027, Australia's established-home ban to March 2027, Saudi Arabia's new law from January 2026). Published rules for information only — not legal advice; every response says so first. |
| employment_rules | The minimums a job's law sets in each of the 41 spine countries: paid annual leave in days with its `basis` (`working` or `calendar`, never converted), the minimum notice an employer and an employee must give in weeks (`noticeNote` where it rises with tenure), the probation ceiling in months and the ordinary weekly-hours ceiling — a hand-curated register with the labour authority's page and check date per row, added 13 Sep 2026; an entry read from secondary reporting because the official page could not be fetched is marked `confidence: "secondary"`. A fact the law does not set is ABSENT, never zero (the US sets no paid leave, notice or hours ceiling); federal countries carry the federal floor. `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side; without either, ranks by `metric` (`minAnnualLeaveDays` default, `noticeEmployerMinWeeks`, `probationMaxMonths`, `maxWeeklyHours`), most first unless `sort=fewest`, with the countries that set no figure in `excluded`. Statutory floors only — contracts and collective agreements usually give more. For information only — not legal advice; every response says so first. |
| driving_rules | What a visitor needs before driving in each of the 41 spine countries: which side of the road, the national default urban, rural and motorway speed limits in the unit signed there (`speedUnit` km/h or mph, never converted), the blood-alcohol limit for ordinary drivers in g/100 ml (`bacNote` for novice and professional limits; 0 is a real zero-tolerance rule), equipment the law requires carried from a fixed vocabulary, and whether an International Driving Permit is needed (`idpRequired`, from GOV.UK's per-country table for a UK photocard licence; absent where that table is silent) — a hand-curated register with the authority's page and check date per row, added 13 Sep 2026; secondary-sourced entries are marked `confidence: "secondary"`. A limit not set nationally is ABSENT, never zero (Germany's motorways, US and Canadian limits). `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side; without either, ranks by `metric` (`speedMotorway` default, `speedUrban`, `speedRural`, `bacLimitPct`), highest first unless `sort=lowest`, optionally filtered by `drivesOn` and `idpRequired`; mph limits are ordered by their km/h equivalent for the sort only. For information only; conditions change — every response says so first. |
| find_student_visas | Student-visa routes for the 41 spine countries — a hand-curated register of the funds a student must show (amount, currency, per month or year), the work hours allowed in term, the post-study stay in months, a path-to-residency flag, the official page it was read from and the check date; secondary-sourced entries are marked, and countries with no route are `kind: "none"`. No tuition figures: no citable structured source exists. Give `funds` with optional `currency` and `per` (year default; month) for a match: routes the funds reach, near misses within 25%, routes with no published figure, exclusions with the reason, and the countries with no route. Or `country` for one entry, `countries` for a side-by-side. Funds are compared per year in USD at the site's FX snapshot; figures move each academic year. Published rules for information only — not immigration advice; every response says so first. |
| country_dossier | The three to six headline figures each hub owns for one country, in one call: price level vs the US and datasets covering it (compare); monthly essentials, health out-of-pocket spending and — with `income` — what is left after costs (costs); modelled median and minimum wage, ILOSTAT measured median, pension replacement rate (earn); safety and healthcare-access scores, rule of law, disaster risk, comfortable days, tax-residency threshold, passport rank, nomad-visa programmes (move); public holidays, latency and download speed, employer contribution loading, weekly hours, paid maternity leave (work); inflation, policy rate, banked adults, remittance corridors surveyed (money); combined corporate tax rate, top income-tax rate and where it starts, standard VAT rate (absent for the US — state sales taxes are not a 0% VAT), the Women, Business and the Law index and retirement ages for men and women (rules); FCDO and US State Department advice levels, the yellow-fever certificate position, homicide rate and PM2.5 exposure with their years (safety); retirement ages for men and women (OECD, else WBL), the net replacement rate, life expectancy and the kind of retiree visa (retire). Effective average corporate tax rate, standard withholding on dividends, days to register a company (absent outside the B-READY cohort) and the kind of founder visa (business). Since 5 Sep 2026 the sections also carry doctors per 10,000 (safety), the couple's net childcare cost as a share of income (costs), days for imports to clear customs and hours on tax compliance (business), the E-Government index (work), and the foreign-ownership band for property and the kind of student visa (move) — each absent where its source does not cover the country. Every figure carries the id of the source that produced it, `tools` names the MCP tool to call for detail per section, and `sources` lists only what was actually included. A section or figure the site has no data for is ABSENT, never null — Thailand has no |
| list_datasets | The registry of every dataset behind the site's figures — price levels, wages, housing, healthcare, holidays, working time, inflation, remittance prices, and the rest — each with the date it last changed, whether it is FETCHED by a script or REVIEWED by a person (hand-maintained data and model assumptions carry review dates, not refresh dates), the page it appears on, and the refresh script. With `since` (YYYY-MM-DD), `changed` lists only the datasets strictly newer than that date, so an agent that cached a figure can decide what to re-fetch instead of re-fetching everything. Pure: `since` comes from the caller; the stamps are the engines' own `updated` exports. Carries no figures and therefore no attribution block; each dataset's provenance travels with the tool that serves it. |
| compare_climate | Monthly climate normals from ERA5 reanalysis (2015-2024) via Open-Meteo: mean daily maximum and minimum temperature, average monthly rainfall, and a count of comfortable days. Pass `city` (slug) or `country` (alpha-2) for one place's twelve months — a country answers through a named representative city, because a country does not have one climate. Otherwise cities are ranked by comfortable days, for a single `month` (1-12) or across the year; the seasonal question is the one people actually have, and an annual total hides it. A comfortable day has a maximum between 18 and 27 C with under 1 mm of rain — a STATED PREFERENCE, not an objective measure: it is temperate-biased and scores hot destinations low on terms they did not agree to, so mean maximum and rainfall travel with every row for callers who want to rank on those instead. ERA5 is reanalysis rather than station observation, which makes it complete and comparable across countries. |
| compare_country_risk | INFORM Risk from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre: a 0-10 composite where HIGHER IS WORSE, plus the three dimensions behind it — hazard (exposure to earthquakes, floods, cyclones, drought, conflict), vulnerability (how exposed the population is) and copingCapacity (whether institutions and infrastructure could respond). The last is usually the one that matters when choosing where to live: two countries can face the same earthquake and have completely different outcomes. Safest-first by default. Covers 191 countries, far wider than this site's country pages. A country INFORM does not score is ABSENT, never zero — zero is the safest possible value and would rank an unassessed country first. Deliberately not folded into any other ranking here: risk flags, it never silently reweights a cost or livability score. |
| arrival_cost | The cash needed to ARRIVE somewhere, as opposed to what a month costs once you live there: the entry fee for a given passport, the first month's rent, the deposit, and a long-stay visa fee where one has been verified against the issuing government. READ `complete` BEFORE `totalUsd`. Rent covers a subset of the country spine and most visa fees could not be verified, so the total is a FLOOR whenever `complete` is false, and `missing` names every component that could not be priced. The total can legitimately be 0 - visa-free entry into a country with no rent figure sums to nothing known - which is honest arithmetic and a false headline. `depositMonths` is a STATED ASSUMPTION, not a measurement: no free global dataset of deposit norms exists. The entry route itself is derived exactly from passport mobility data, so 'for this passport, this destination is visa-free' is always answered even when no fee is. |