How Salary Equivalency Works
The exact real-data methodology behind "what salary in country B matches an income from country A" — no AI, no invented numbers.
The core formula
RouteWise computes each country's own "price level" as avg_monthly_earnings_usd / avg_monthly_earnings_ppp — both real ILOSTAT figures. A price level above 1.0 means nominal USD buys less there than the PPP figure implies (expensive); below 1.0 means it buys more (cheap). The equivalent salary in a target country is: your salary in USD, multiplied by the ratio of the target country's price level to your home country's price level.
Why not GDP per capita?
GDP per capita measures a country's total economic output divided by population — it says nothing about what an individual salary can buy, and it's skewed by a handful of oil or finance-heavy economies whose national wealth concentration doesn't reflect typical living costs. Real, paired earnings-in-USD and earnings-in-PPP data is a more honest, individual-level signal.
What it doesn't account for
This is a national-average comparison, not a personalized budget. It doesn't know your specific lifestyle, city, or spending habits — it tells you what a comparable standard of living costs on average, using real, disclosed data, not what your exact monthly budget should be.