Cities with low cost of living and good safety

Overview

Fukuoka tops our ranking of cities with low cost of living and good safety at 7.9/10, just ahead of Valencia and Vienna. Choosing where to live is easier with numbers in front of you than with a gut feeling. Cities with low cost of living and good safety is exactly that: a data-driven answer, not a listicle opinion. Filtered to cities scoring at least 6/10 on affordability and 7/10 on safety, then ranked by a blend of both criteria plus overall livability. Rather than sorting the full 303-city database by a single number, this list applies two filters at once and only keeps cities that clear both bars — a more realistic way to search than optimizing for one metric alone. Average safety across this list sits at 7.7/10 and average climate at 5.9/10 — both well above a random sample of world cities, which says as much about the filtering as it does about any individual entry. Fukuoka posts the strongest individual safety score in this group at 9/10, a detail the blended ranking above can obscure if safety happens to matter more to you than to the average reader. This kind of two-factor filter tends to surface less obvious picks than either single-criterion ranking would alone — cities that never top a "cheapest" or "safest" list individually but rarely disappoint on either front. The full ranking, full scorecards and links to each city's dedicated page are below.

Full ranking

Curious how the top two stack up criterion by criterion? Compare Fukuoka vs Valencia directly →

Methodology

Cities must clear minimum thresholds on two criteria at once to even appear on this list, then the remaining set is ranked by a blend of those two criteria plus the overall livability score. Want different priorities? Set your own weights in the recommender.

Understanding the criteria

Two criteria act as hard filters before ranking even starts — a city with a perfect score on one but a poor score on the other won't appear here at all, which is the entire point of a compound list like this one.

Tips for using this ranking

• →Because both filters have to clear a bar, this list is naturally shorter — treat every entry as a genuine finalist rather than skimming past the ones lower down.
• →Compare the top 2 head-to-head with the comparator tool; a compound ranking like this one often has closer margins than a single-criterion list.

Who this ranking is for

This ranking is most useful for Freelancers — independent workers balancing cost of living against healthcare access, Budget-conscious movers — movers for whom affordability outweighs every other factor and Safety-first movers — people relocating somewhere unfamiliar who weigh personal safety above all. If none of those match your situation, the recommender tool lets you set your own weights instead of relying on any preset list.

Strengths & limitations of this ranking

Frequently asked questions

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