The 2019 Cost of Living survey, produced by crowd-sourced global database Numbeo, ranked Abu Dhabi as the most expensive city among 22 Arab cities and the 185th most expensive among 433 cities worldwide. Beirut followed in 196th place, then Al Ain in the UAE (199th), Doha (203rd) and Amman (209th) as the five Arab cities with the highest cost of living. The Arab cities that have the lowest cost of living are Casablanca (341st), Algiers (367th), Cairo (398th), Alexandria (404th) and Tunis (407th). The Cost of Living survey is a relative indicator of the prices of consumer goods and services, such as groceries, restaurants, transportation and utilities. Based on the same cities included in the 2018 and 2019 surveys, the rankings of 14 out of 20 Arab cities rose, reflecting an increase in the cost of living relative to other cities worldwide, while the rankings of six cities regressed from the 2018 survey. Further, the Rent Index shows that Abu Dhabi has the highest apartment rents regionally, while rents in Alexandria are the lowest. Also, the Groceries Index indicates that Al Ain is the most expensive city in terms of grocery prices in the region, while grocery prices in Alexandria are the lowest. In addition, the Restaurant Index shows that Abu Dhabi has the highest prices of meals and drinks at restaurants and pubs, while Tunis has the lowest such prices regionally. Numbeo relies on residents' inputs and uses data from official sources to compute the indices.
Source: Numbeo, Byblos Research