It’s always been the lifelong dream of many people to move in United Kingdom, because it is a beautiful country, it offers plenty of opportunities for growth at work and the possibility to study is some of the best universities in the world. Moving to the UK requires a lot of preparation and it is necessary to analysis the benefits and the costs. UK is one of the most expensive countries in the world, so everybody needs to analyse the costs of living before moving there.
In this work, we are going to rank the UK cities by cost of living without rent and cost of living plus rent, which are an estimation of overall cost of living. They are calculated by using an empirical formula that takes in consideration the members of the family and the costs of rent, food, utilities, restaurants, bars, transports, clothing, shoes, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages and holidays. The higher is the value of the index, higher is the cost of living.
The city with the highest cost of living in UK is London, followed by Brighton, Reading, Cambridge and Bristol. Belfast is in the penultimate place in cost of living ranking and Kingston upon Hull is the city less expensive in United Kingdom. If we take in consideration cost of living index plus rent, the city with the highest cost of living in UK is London, followed by Brighton, Oxford, Cambridge and Reading. The less expensive cities are: Derby and Kingston upon Hull.
| Rank | City | Cost of Living | Cost of Living + Rent |
| 1 | London | 80,8 | 75,8 |
| 2 | Brighton | 75,7 | 60,1 |
| 3 | Reading | 72,6 | 57,3 |
| 4 | Cambridge | 72,3 | 58,1 |
| 5 | Bristol | 71,7 | 55,0 |
| 6 | Portsmouth | 71,0 | 52,3 |
| 7 | Oxford | 70,4 | 58,6 |
| 8 | Aberdeen | 69,8 | 49,2 |
| 9 | Edinburgh | 69,5 | 52,5 |
| 10 | York | 69,1 | 50,5 |
| 11 | Leicester | 69,0 | 47,0 |
| 12 | Birmingham | 68,8 | 50,1 |
| 13 | Manchester | 68,5 | 50,6 |
| 14 | Southampton | 68,0 | 50,4 |
| 15 | Dundee | 67,7 | 46,6 |
| 16 | Cardiff | 66,6 | 47,6 |
| 17 | Newcastle upon Tyne | 66,3 | 46,3 |
| 18 | Nottingham | 66,3 | 46,1 |
| 19 | Derby | 66,1 | 44,2 |
| 20 | Glasgow | 65,9 | 47,0 |
| 21 | Leeds | 64,5 | 46,7 |
| 22 | Liverpool | 64,2 | 45,2 |
| 23 | Sheffield | 63,0 | 44,3 |
| 24 | Belfast | 61,8 | 44,2 |
| 25 | Kingston upon Hull | 58,6 | 39,4 |
For the others UK cities, there is no information about these indexes, so they are not included in the ranking of the UK cities by cost of living and cost of living plus rent.
The data used in this work are provided by Numbeo and are relating to 2020.