Numbeo

Numbeo is a Serbian crowd-sourced global database of perceived consumer prices, crime rates, quality of health care, among other statistics. Data on Numbeo is not peer-reviewed, and could be inserted or altered by anyone accessing the website. It has been criticized for its inaccuracy due to its ease of statistics misuse and general disinformation.

Numbeo.com
Type of site
Crowd-sourced information to provide cost of living and travel information
Available inEnglish
FoundedApril 2009
Country of originSerbia
OwnerNumbeo doo
Founder(s)Mladen Adamovic
URLwww.numbeo.com
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedApril 2009

Description

Founded in April 2009, Numbeo claims itself to be a "collaborative online database" which enables users to "share and compare information about the cost of living between countries and cities".[1] The Numbeo website is operated by Numbeo doo, a company registered in Serbia. The founder of Numbeo is Mladen Adamovic.[2]

Present Status

Numbeo was mentioned or used as a source in hundreds of major newspapers around the world, including Forbes, Business Insider, Time, The Economist, BBC, The New York Times, China Daily, The Telegraph.[3] Numbeo claims to be the biggest website of its kind with more than 8.5 million data collected as of April 2023.[4] According to SimilarWeb ranking in April 2023, Numbeo.com was among the top 20,000 websites in the world (ranked by traffic) and among top 200 websites by traffic in Travel category.[5]

Criticism of accuracy

In 2012, Columnist Alistair Walsh suggested in an article written for the website Property Observer, that Numbeo's information is based on what people say and should be taken with a grain of salt. This is because no third party check or audit on the accuracy of data exists.[6]

Numbeo's ranking of crime-ridden cities is not based on any confirmed stats. Instead, it is based on ‘reviews’ left by anonymous users of the site, making it easy to quickly build an image of a city in either a extremely positive or negative manner. Comparison against other international city data sources conducted by Ray Woodcock in 2017 suggests that Numbeo is often very inaccurate and misleading.[7]

In 2017, a Swedish man showed how easily Numbeo stats could be manipulated, by pushing the Swedish city of Lund to become the most dangerous city in the world on the website's "Crime Index Rate" in less than a day. Trulsson added that Numbeo should hardly be considered stats, as anyone can change the data, as many times as they want, in complete anonymity.[8]

In 2022, a Numbeo claim that Bradford, England was "Europe's most dangerous city" went viral on social media and was reported on in British press.[9][10]

Same for France, in 2022, a newspaper named Le Figaro used Numbeo's ranking to compare violence and insecurity and titled "Insecurity: Nantes, Paris, Marseille, French cities unscrew in the world ranking of the safest cities" without criticism on the method of calculation, which is based on ‘reviews’ left by anonymous users, even if numbers are not realistic, like saying France is more dangerous than Mexico. While Mexico have seen at least 13 journalists killed in 2022, no one have been killed in France.[11][12]

See also

References
  1. "Sources for cost of livings reports and comparisons". ICAEW. London: The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
  2. "About Numbeo".
  3. "Numbeo in the news". Numbeo.
  4. "Cost of Living". Numbeo.
  5. "SimilarWeb Page about Numbeo.com". SimilarWeb.
  6. Walsh, Alistair (2012-08-29). "Harare has poor healthcare and political violence, but property is relatively inexpensive". propertyobserver.com.au. Archived from the original on 2017-09-18.
  7. Woodcock, Ray (2017-06-06). "229 Low Cost Cities Around the World: Data Sources". Ray Woodcock's Latest. Archived from the original on 2017-09-22.
  8. Lee, Rodsen (17 January 2017). "How one Swede made a city the world's 'most dangerous' to expose fake stats". thelocal.se. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  9. Meek, Natasha (19 August 2022). "Bradford is Europe's 'most dangerous' city? Police force slams viral claim". Telegraph & Argus. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  10. Mwitumwa, Monde (20 August 2022). "Yorkshire city is 'most dangerous in Europe' and police boss is furious". YorkshireLive. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  11. "Insécurité: Nantes, Paris, Marseille, les villes françaises dévissent dans le classement mondial des villes les plus sûres". 23 September 2022.
  12. "In 2022, journalist killings continue unabated in Mexico amid a climate of impunity". 30 August 2022.
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