October the 15th, 2026 – Split has occupied a high position in terms of quality of life in relation to costs of living, being above Stockholm and and Copenhagen, but should it rank this highly?
Two of Croatia’s largest cities also made it into the aforementioned quality of life ranking. Slobodan Mufic reports for Index that according to this research, Zagreb and Split are cities with above-average, even high, quality of life, but at the same time they are extremely expensive relative to the median salary.
does split really offer a better life than 94% of other european cities?
The analysis shows that Split offers a better life than 94 percent of other European cities, including Copenhagen, Prague, Stockholm and Madrid, but in order to enjoy its benefits and advantages one needs to earn 29 percent more than the net median salary, which in Croatia back in July amounted to 1,346 euros. The median salary means that half of employees received a net salary lower than 1,346 euros, and half received at least that much or more.
Zagreb fared somewhat worse, or better, depending on which parameter on the chart you look at. In the capital, the chart says, the quality of life is significantly lower than in Split: Zagreb is better than 64 percent of other European cities (for example Graz, Rome, Berlin and Milan). On the other hand, the mentioned standard is also significantly more accessible and one needs to earn only three percent more than the net median salary.
the worst quality of life is in belgrade
The best and most affordable life, according to the research, is lived in Vienna, Helsinki and the Dutch cities of The Hague and Eindhoven. And the worst and most expensive in Skopje, Belgrade, Sofia and Bucharest. That is at least how it was calculated by Alessandro Palombo, an Italian entrepreneur and doctor of legal sciences, who published the research in the form of several charts on social networks and his website.
Of course, what immediately catches the eye on the chart is the paradox that Skopje is more expensive than Paris and London, and that Oslo and Geneva are cheaper than Zagreb. However, Palombo did not take into account absolute living costs, according to which the largest European cities are certainly expensive, but the ratio of costs to the median salary in those cities. The contradiction is nevertheless only apparent: a city can be very expensive, but the local median salary can be sufficient for an excellent standard of living. Likewise, a city with relatively low prices can be difficult to afford for local residents with low salaries.
numbeo deemed “an unreliable data source”
The fundamental problem that largely calls into question the validity of the research is the source of the data. As usual when it comes to such analyses, Palombo uses data from Numbeo, an online database that, based on user inputs, collects and compares information on living costs, prices, salaries, safety, quality of life and other indicators in cities and countries around the world.
Numbeo is often quite unreliable as a source because anyone can enter data in a certain category. Although there are automatic filters for suspicious values, its data and analyses should generally be taken with a large dose of caution. For this reason, Palombo himself does not present his comparisons as infallible. In a discussion on X he admitted that he considers the quality of such data limited and that some components of quality of life are inevitably subjective.
Specifically, according to the October data on prices on Numbeo, for Split in the previous 12 months data was submitted by 37 different participants, and for Zagreb by 156. Dozens of voluntary participants are not a representative sample for a display on a map with seemingly precise coordinates. Numbeo’s standard quality-of-life index includes eight factors: purchasing power, safety, healthcare, property prices relative to income, cost of living, commute time, pollution and climate.
Palombo states that he calculated quality of life without Numbeo’s price-related indicators. What remains are the criteria of safety, healthcare, traffic, pollution and climate, which at Numbeo to a large extent rest on the perception of the website’s users rather than on official statistics. Financial affordability is shown separately by Palombo on the horizontal axis.
croatia’s housing structure makes a major difference
However, quality of life in this research does not take into account other important criteria at all, such as the quality of education, employment opportunities, availability of kindergartens, cultural offer, social protection and the real possibility of finding long-term housing.
It should also be borne in mind that the research is based on a single person who earns the median salary and lives in a rented one-bedroom apartment outside the city centre. That in no way corresponds to the financial status of the majority of the population. For Croatia specifically, this difference is particularly important. According to Eurostat data, in 2024 91 percent of Croatia’s inhabitants lived in their own property. A person living in their own paid-off apartment, a young tenant, a married couple with two salaries, a four-member family and a pensioner have completely different relationships between income and living costs. This clearly shows how much the author’s model differs from reality.
It is also not explained by what criterion these particular 79 cities were selected. It is not entirely clear whether the author of the research took into account the median net salary in the entire country, the region or only in the specific city.
osijek finds itself (surprisingly) on the list
Interestingly, Palombo also offers another interactive map that, according to the same criteria, compares 322 world cities. Among Croatian cities, Osijek is the biggest surprise. It is at approximately the 99.7th percentile of quality of life, which places it among the highest-rated cities, even slightly ahead of Vienna, Helsinki, Split and Rijeka. The only problem is that the basic (and entirely bizarre) assumption is an annual gross income of 86,000 US dollars, which is deeply unrealistically high for Croatian standards. Only a few thousand employees in Croatia receive such a salary.
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