Rating Of Russian Cheapest And Most Expensive Cities

06-07-2020

While planning your travel around Russia, an idea becoming more and more attractive with the introduction of an e-visa scheduled for 2021, you may want to know what’s the cost of living in the country’s different cities. Not that it is going to save you a fortune or impact your travel budget somehow but anyway might be of help. Here is the rating of all Russian regions’ capitals ranked by how much people there spend for a living. And no, Moscow is not the number one when we talk about money.

Some Important Notes

— the rating is based on the Russian Statistics Agency’s (Rosstat) survey for 2019. That may seem a bit obsolete, but there have been no strong regional economic’ growth or fall, the economic impact of the COVID-19 and the drop in oil prices affected the whole country;

— Rosstat’s survey contains the figures on a few hundreds of Russian cities and towns. The base for calculations is 275 goods and services, vodka included;

— we selected only the capitals of Russian regions, which means you’ll not find the towns of the Moscow region and the Leningrad region as they don’t have formal capitals. The government of the Moscow region sits in Moscow, the government of the Leningrad region sits in St. Petersburg;

— Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sevastopol are federal cities like Bremen or Hamburg in Germany. They naturally don’t have their capitals and they are not the capitals of regions (contrary to the widely accepted wrong assumption that St. Petersburg is the capital of the Leningrad region). Read more about Russia’s administrative organization here;

— all the cities are ranked concerning the average cost of living which is 1. Figure 1 for Krasnoyarsk means that the cost of living here is Russia’s average; for example, 0.88 for Kemerovo means that people here spend 12 percent less than the average Russian resident;

— you will find the absolute prices for St. Petersburg in this post. The city has 1.12, so knowing this and having the absolute figures you can approximately calculate how much a cup of cappuccino may cost in Irkutsk or Saransk or wherever.

The Most Expensive And The Cheapest Russian Cities

Rank	City	Region	Result
1	Magas	Republic Of Ingushetia	0.72
2-3	Belgorod	Belgorod region	0.86
2-3	Saransk	Republic Of Mordovia	0.86
4	Grozny	Republic Of Chechnya	0.87
5-10	Nalchik	Kabardino-Balkar Republic	0.88
5-10	Vladikavkaz	The Republic Of Northern Ossetia	0.88
5-10	Penza	Penza region	0.88
5-10	Cheboksary	Republic Of Chuvashia	0.88
5-10	Omsk	Omsk region	0.88
5-10	Kemerovo	Kemerovo region	0.88
11-14	Kursk	Kursk region	0.89
11-14	Lipetsk	Lipetsk region	0.89
11-14	Yoshkar-Ola	Republic Of Mari El	0.89
11-14	Saratov	Saratov region	0.89
15-19	Kostroma	Kostroma region	0.90
15-19	Orel	Orel region	0.90
15-19	Orenburg	Orenburg region	0.90
15-19	Kazan	Republic Of Tatarstan	0.90
15-19	Tambov	Tambov region	0.90
20-23	Volgograd	Volgograd region	0.91
20-23	Chelyabinsk	Chelyabinsk region	0.91
20-23	Cherkessk	Karachay-Cherkess Republic	0.91
20-23	Barnaul	Altai region	0.91
24-26	Voronezh	Voronezh region	0.92
24-26	Elista	Republic Of Kalmykia	0.92
24-26	Makhachkala	Republic Of Dagestan	0.92
27	Maykop	Republic Of Adygea	0.93
28-29	Izhevsk	Republic Of Udmurtia	0.94
28-29	Kirov	Kirov region	0.94
30-32	Ryazan	Ryazan region	0.95
30-32	Kyzyl	Republic Of Tuva	0.95
30-32	Abakan	Republic Of Khakassia	0.95
33-38	Bryansk	Bryansk region	0.96
33-38	Tula	Tula region	0.96
33-38	Astrakhan	Astrakhan region	0.96
33-38	Rostov-on-Don	Rostov region	0.96
33-38	Stavropol	Stavropol region	0.96
33-38	Samara	Samara region	0.96
39	Ufa	Republic Of Bashkortostan	0.97
40-47	Kaluga	Kaluga region	0.98
40-47	Tver	Tver region	0.98
40-47	Krasnodar	Krasnodar region	0.98
40-47	Tomsk	Tomsk region	0.98
40-47	Ulan-Ude	Republic Of Buryatia	0.98
40-47	Kurgan	Kurgan region	0.98
40-47	Novosibirsk	Novosibirsk region	0.98
40-47	Irkutsk	Irkutsk region	0.98
48-50	Ivanovo	Ivanovo region	0.99
48-50	Veliky Novgorod	Novgorod region	0.99
48-50	Simferopol	Republic Of Crimea	0.99
51-54	Pskov	Pskov region	1.00
51-54	Krasnoyarsk	Krasnoyarsk region	1.00
51-54	Perm	Perm region	1.00
51-54	Chita	Zabaykalsky region	1.00
55-59	Smolensk	Smolensk region	1.01
55-59	Yekaterinburg	Sverdlovsk region	1.01
55-59	Vologda	Vologda region	1.01
55-59	Nizhny Novgorod	Nizhny Novgorod region	1.01
55-59	Tyumen	Tyumen region	1.01
60-62	Vladimir	Vladimir region	1.02
60-62	Yaroslavl	Yaroslavl region	1.02
60-62	Blagoveshchensk	Amur region	1.02
63	Kaliningrad	Kaliningrad region	1.03
64-65	Sevastopol		1.04
64-65	Gorno-Altaysk	Altai Republic	1.04
66-67	Petrozavodsk	Republic Of Karelia	1.08
66-67	Syktyvkar	Komi Republic	1.08
68	Birobidzhan	Jewish Autonomous region	1.11
69-70	Arkhangelsk	Arkhangelsk region	1.12
69-70	St. Petersburg		1.12
71	Khanty-Mansiysk	Khanty-Mansi Autonomous district	1.18
72	Vladivostok	Primorye region	1.19
73	Murmansk	Murmansk region	1.23
74	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk region	1.25
75	Khabarovsk	Khabarovsk region	1.27
76	Moscow		1.29
77	Yakutsk	Republic Of Yakutia (Sakha)	1.31
78	Salekhard	Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district	1.32
79	Magadan	Magadan region	1.35
80	Naryan-Mar	Nenets autonomous district	1.41
81	Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky	Kamchatka region	1.52
82	Anadyr	Chukotka autonomous district	1.62