What does it actually cost to live here?
Cost of living calculator by county
What does it actually cost to live here?
Average rent for the county you pick, plus what a household of your size spends on everything else, from the CSO.
Why another figure might differ
Crowd-sourced cost-of-living sites may give a higher figure. They average what visitors choose to submit, which skews to city centres and to people who look such sites up. These are the CSO’s own samples, weighted to the population.
What this assumes
- Rent is the RTB average for the county, across every property type and size, for the most recent quarter the CSO has published.
- Everything else comes from the Household Budget Survey 2022-2023 by household size, uprated to December 2025 prices using the all-items CPI.
- It is an average of real households, not a budget for yours. The survey total includes childcare, a car, health insurance and pension contributions — but averaged across every household, including the many that pay none of them, so a household actually paying a full-time crèche place spends far more than this.
- It assumes one household in one county. Rents inside Dublin and Cork vary far more than these county averages suggest.
Averages from published statistics, not a quote and not advice. What you actually pay depends on where in the county you live and how you live.
Sources
- CSO RIQ02 — RTB Average Monthly Rent Report (opens in a new tab)checked 2026-09-11
- CSO HBS04 — average weekly household expenditure by household size (opens in a new tab)checked 2026-09-11
- CSO CPM01 — Consumer Price Index by month (opens in a new tab)checked 2026-09-11