World Bank Open Data
CC BY 4.0
Country price levels, purchasing power, health, economy, internet, pollution, and population indicators.
Source termsData Sources
Freedom Abroad Estimates
Freedom Abroad cost, safety, healthcare, climate, school, environment, and quality-of-life figures are modeled estimates built from open public sources and editorial corrections. They are directional planning tools, not precise quotes or guarantees.
GeoNames
CC BY 4.0
City identity, coordinates, population, timezone, elevation, and administrative geography.
Source termsWikidata
CC0
Country and city identifiers, capital/currency/language metadata, and cross-source reconciliation.
Source termsNASA POWER
NASA open science data
Climate comfort signals, temperature normals, and rainfall scoring inputs.
Source termsWikimedia Analytics
CC0
Pageview-based popularity signals used as a tourism and demand proxy.
Source termsFrankfurter / ECB rates
Commercial-use API
Foreign exchange rates for currency normalization.
Source termsSchool websites and admissions pages
Public web pages
School names, grade ranges, language model claims, admissions notes, contact details, and tuition only when publicly published.
Source termsEducation authority and credential directories
Public registry pages
Public school incorporation claims and credential signals such as IB, Cambridge International, AP Course Ledger, BSO, UNAM, SEP/SEG, CIS, NEASC, WASC, or Cognia where a verified public source exists.
Source termsBusiness and community directories
Public web pages
Fallback verification for school existence, location, contact details, and historical program notes when no current official school page is available.
Source termsMethodology
City monthly cost estimates start from World Bank country price levels and are adjusted by city size, capital status, tourism demand, and Freedom Abroad-owned overrides. Scores are normalized into familiar 0-100 or 0-200 scales so existing comparison, map, and tool interfaces remain readable while the underlying source layer changes.
Data-heavy pages label modeled values as Freedom Abroad estimates and include confidence states where available. We revise the method as better open sources become available.
Schools Methodology
School records are ETL-managed and read from Freedom Abroad tables. The public site does not call school websites, SIGED, INEGI, IB, Cambridge, AP, CIS, NEASC, WASC, BSO, or similar directories directly from the frontend.
Global credential ingestion starts with IB, Cambridge International, AP Course Ledger, and British Schools Overseas records. Those records land in private staging tables, are matched against existing schools by official source ID, domain, and normalized location, then publish only after review or a deterministic high-confidence match.
Public school results show verified records only and default toward expat-viable private, semi-private, bilingual, and credentialed pathways. Public systems may be listed where they are genuinely useful, but they are not treated as equivalent across countries. Tuition and admissions details appear only from verified public sources; otherwise the UI says "Contact school" rather than estimating.