Prague ranked among world's top cities for expats in a post-COVID-19 world

Prague routinely ranks among "best of" lists for expats in international surveys, and it doesn't look like the COVID-19 pandemic is going to change that.

Analyzing various costs of living, work-life balance, and other factors, online moving information service MoverDB has put together a list of the world's top 25 cities for expats to move to in post-COVID-19 world.

Prague comes in at #15.

The list ranks the cities according to costs for food and drink, transport, bills and WiFi, and rent; the percentage of expats among each city's population; average life expectancy; average salary; and percentage of reported employee overtime.

Overall, Madrid came in at #1 among the cities surveyed. Reykjavik, Luxembourg, Helsinki, and Geneva rounded out the top 5. The top 25 cities were exclusively European, though the study included cities across the globe.

Other central European cities that rank high in the list include Vienna (#10), Berlin (#14), and Bratislava (#23).

Prague was rated highest for its living costs: its food and drink prices (£6.40, or about 189 crowns, for a takeaway meal) were estimated to be the lowest among the top 25 cities. Public transport prices (24 crowns for a one-way ticket) came in second-lowest.

The Czech capital also rates high for its rental prices, which may have taken a dip due to COVID-19 after years of soaring coasts, coming in at #6 among the top 25 cities at around 20,000 crowns monthly.

Those costs are balanced, however. Average salaries in Prague came in at #23 of the the top 25 cities (around 370,000 crowns yearly), and average life expectancy (79.2 years) came in at #22.

At the other end of the list, Santiago was ranked the worst city for expats post-COVID-19, followed by Bogota, Cape Town, Mexico City, and Brasilia.

Somewhat surprisingly, two central European cities not far from Prague were also ranked among the bottom ten. Budapest was ranked the 7th-worst city for expats, while Warsaw came in at #9.

These are MoverDB's top 25 cities for expats in a post-COVID-19 world: