I built a tool to rank cities based on purchasing power for SWEs
Show HN: I built a tool to calculate real tech salaries across cities (after tax & COL) As a software engineer obsessed with data-driven decisions, I wanted to quantify how much better/worse other cities would be compared to my current home in Berlin. While sites like Glassdoor and levels.fyi tell you how much you can earn, they don't show what you actually keep after taxes and living costs. So I built Tech City Index - a tool that compares cities based on actual purchasing power for software engineers, combining: * Real-time salary data from levels.fyi * Cost of living data from Numbeo…
In plain words
Tech City Index is a tool that ranks cities by purchasing power for software engineers. It combines salary data from levels.fyi, cost-of-living information from Numbeo, local tax calculations, and weather data to show how much money engineers actually keep after taxes and expenses. The tool helps software engineers compare cities objectively when considering relocation, revealing which locations offer the best financial outcomes beyond nominal salary figures.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Show HN: I built a tool to calculate real tech salaries across cities (after tax & COL) As a software engineer obsessed with data-driven decisions, I wanted to quantify how much better/worse other cities would be compared to my current home in Berlin. While sites like Glassdoor and levels.fyi tell you how much you can earn, they don't show what you actually keep after taxes and living costs. So I built Tech City Index - a tool that compares cities based on actual purchasing power for software engineers, combining: * Real-time salary data from levels.fyi * Cost of living data from Numbeo * Local tax calculations at median tech income (thanks, GPT-4o) * Weather data (naturally) Some surprising findings: 1. Seattle and Austin top the list (ahead of SF) due to: * Similar tech salaries to SF * No state income tax (vs California's 13.3%) * Significantly lower housing costs 2. The top rankings are unsurprisingly dominated by the US, which is still by far the best place for a SWE to be. Even an engineer working in the middle of nowhere (no disrespect, Kansas City) has 42% more purchasing power than their London counterpart, thanks to: * Access to US-only remote jobs * 32% lower cost of living * Lower tax rates 3. Western Europe significantly underperforms both US and Middle East markets. A Milan-based SWE: * Earns 54% less than in Abu Dhabi * Pays 38% in taxes (vs 0% in UAE) * Faces 11% higher living costs The tool includes a "salary converter" - input your current compensation and family size (e.g., number of kids needing childcare), and it calculates the equivalent salary needed in any target city to maintain your standard of living. Try it out: https://www.techcities.app Built with Cursor and Next.js Feedback welcome!
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Hi HN - Like many in tech, I've thought about relocating to different cities. But comparing salaries, income tax, housing costs, and overall cost of living is hard. It's hard to know where you'd actually save up more money. So I built a site to make it easier. It's my first HN project, hope you find it useful. Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!
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