Cambodia vs Vietnam Cost of Living 2026: Indexes Disagree
Numbeo and livingcost disagree on Cambodia against Vietnam. What the indexes measure, what they omit, and which lines actually decide it for an owner.
The first two results for this comparison are crowd-sourced indexes, and they do not agree with each other. That is worth more than either number on its own, because it tells you the answer depends on the basket rather than on the countries.
This page reports both, explains the gap, and then adds the lines neither index carries. The property comparison itself belongs to Cambodia vs Vietnam property and the Cambodian cost base to the Cambodia cost of living guide; what follows is the living cost and what ownership adds on top.
What do the published indexes actually say?
The two indexes disagree, and by a wide margin. For foreign buyers reading either one first, the spread matters: Numbeo puts the cost of living in Vietnam 22.7% lower than in Cambodia excluding rent, while livingcost.org puts Cambodia at $832 a month against $637 in Vietnam, a gap of 31%, ranking Cambodia 125th against Vietnam 163rd.
| Source | Claim | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Numbeo | Vietnam 22.7% lower than Cambodia, excluding rent | Crowd-sourced index |
| livingcost.org | Cambodia $832 against Vietnam $637, a 31% gap | Crowd-sourced, 10-city comparison |
| Asia Lifestyle Magazine | Vietnam 5% to 20% cheaper on rent, groceries, transport, utilities | Editorial synthesis |
Our analysis of the three is that they agree on direction and disagree on magnitude, which is the normal behaviour of crowd-sourced data rather than a fault in any one of them. Three things drive the spread:
- Different baskets. Groceries and restaurants carry heavy weight, and both differ by contributor city.
- Different samples. Contributors skew toward working-age urban expatriates in both countries.
- Rent handling. Numbeo’s headline excludes rent; livingcost’s average includes it.
Why do the indexes disagree?
The two publishers measure different things and give them the same name. Numbeo’s 22.7% figure explicitly excludes rent, while livingcost’s $832 against $637 is an all-in monthly average, so for foreign buyers the two numbers are not comparable even before the sample differences are considered at all.
The practical consequence is that a reader takes whichever number they saw first and builds a plan on it. We could not confirm any published reconciliation between the two methodologies, and neither publisher claims to be measuring the other’s basket. Our analysis is that the honest reading is directional: Vietnam is cheaper on the everyday lines, by somewhere between 5% and 30% depending on what you count, and no one has produced a figure precise enough to justify choosing a country on it. A buyer who moves for a 20% difference in groceries and lands in the wrong ownership regime has optimised the smallest variable in the decision. On a $832 monthly base a 20% grocery edge is worth perhaps $60, against a transfer tax of 4% that lands once at five figures.
Two differences account for the whole spread:
- Rent is excluded from one headline and included in the other.
- One reports a percentage, the other an absolute monthly figure.
| What differs | Numbeo | livingcost.org |
|---|---|---|
| Rent treatment | Excluded from the headline | Included in the average |
| Output | A percentage difference | An absolute monthly figure |
| Cambodia position | Higher than Vietnam | $832, ranked 125th |
| Vietnam position | 22.7% lower excluding rent | $637, ranked 163rd |
What do the indexes leave out?
The indexes leave out everything that separates owning from visiting. No crowd-sourced index carries a building service charge, a withholding tax on rent, a transfer tax, a foreign-ownership quota or a medical evacuation cost, and for foreign buyers in this market those five lines are large, specific and published.
| Owner line, Cambodia | Figure | In the indexes? |
|---|---|---|
| Rental income withholding, non-resident | 14% of gross | No |
| Building service charge | $0.50 to $1.50 per sqm per month | No |
| Transfer tax at purchase | 4% of assessed value | No |
| Health cover with evacuation | $80 to $200 a month per person | No |
| Capital gains tax from 1 January 2027 | 20% of the gain | No |
Each line is worked separately: the rental income tax guide, the closing costs guide, the sinking fund guide and the capital gains tax guide. The medical line behind the cover figure is in healthcare in Cambodia, and the day-to-day setup in expat life in Cambodia.
Add those rows and the comparison changes shape. A 20% grocery advantage is worth perhaps $60 a month to a single person, against a health-cover line of $80 to $200 a month that no index reports and that is not optional in a country with exactly one JCI-accredited hospital. Our analysis of relocation enquiries is that buyers spend far longer comparing the visible 20% than the invisible lines that are several times larger, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming: the cheaper country on a grocery basket is not reliably the cheaper country to own property in, and the two questions have almost no overlap. A landlord letting at $700 a month loses $1,176 a year to withholding alone, which is roughly twenty months of the grocery advantage.
Insider tip: if you are comparing the two countries seriously, rebuild both budgets from your own three largest lines rather than from an index. For most households those are housing, health cover and schooling, and all three are quotable directly from providers in either country. An index that weights 40 grocery items and omits all three is answering a question you are not asking.
Which comparison actually matters for a buyer?
Our analysis is that the ownership terms decide it, not the basket. A Vietnamese national buying a Phnom Penh condo receives hard strata title held in their own name with no term at all, inside a cap measured as 70% of total private-unit area, which is a structurally different instrument from what a foreigner typically holds in Vietnam.
| What to compare | Cambodia signal |
|---|---|
| What you own | Hard strata title, own name, no term |
| The cap | 70% of total private-unit area |
| When the cap binds | At exit |
- Compare what you own, and for how long, before comparing what you spend.
- Compare the exit, because a quota that binds at sale is invisible at purchase.
- Compare the medical ceiling, because it is the largest uninsured line in either country.
Two-way trade between the countries reached $11.37 billion in 2025, up 12.1% year on year, with governments targeting above $12 billion in 2026 and $20 billion longer term, which is the sort of number that puts staff, offices and tenants on the ground rather than tourists. Vietnam is Cambodia’s third-largest trading partner after China and the United States and sits among its five biggest investors, so the corporate tenant pool is not hypothetical. For a landlord weighing the two countries, that is a more useful number than any grocery index publishes, because it describes who signs a twelve-month lease. For a landlord that matters more than a grocery index, because it describes the tenant pool rather than the shopping basket, and a tenant pool is what pays a $700 rent every month for years. The property comparison is worked fully in Cambodia vs Vietnam property and the buyer-side mechanics in the Vietnamese buyers guide.
What would a like-for-like comparison need?
Five specific lines would have to be added to either index before it could rank these markets for foreign buyers, and none of the five is crowd-sourceable by a volunteer submitting grocery prices, which is why neither publisher has added them in 20 years of operation. Ownership quota, transfer tax, rental withholding, service charge and evacuation cover are all published or contractual rather than observational, which is precisely why volunteer price-collectors do not carry them.
Three of the five are set by statute and two are contract-specific:
- Statutory: transfer tax at 4%, withholding at 14%, the 70% cap.
- Contractual: the service charge and the evacuation cover.
| Missing line | Cambodia figure | Why an index cannot collect it |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign ownership cap | 70% of total private-unit area | Legal, not observational |
| Transfer tax | 4% of assessed value | Set by statute |
| Rental withholding, non-resident | 14% of gross | Set by statute |
| Service charge | $0.50 to $1.50 per sqm per month | Building-specific |
| Evacuation cover | $80 to $200 a month per person | Policy-specific |
Build those five into a comparison and the exercise changes character entirely. A landlord letting a Phnom Penh unit at $700 a month loses $1,176 a year to withholding before management, vacancy or service charge, which is more than the entire annual grocery advantage the indexes describe for a single person. We could not confirm any published comparison that includes them, and the absence is structural rather than accidental: an index built from volunteer price submissions can measure a restaurant meal and cannot measure a quota ledger. That makes the tools genuinely good at the question they answer and useless for the question a buyer is actually asking, which is worth knowing before either number gets copied into a spreadsheet and treated as a conclusion about property.
How should the two numbers actually be used?
The right use is a sanity check rather than a decision, and foreign buyers should treat them that way from the start. Both indexes are free, continuously updated and built from real submissions, and both answer a question about one person’s monthly spending at around $832 that nobody weighing a property purchase in this market is actually asking.
| Use | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Confirming both are in the same bracket | Works |
| Ranking them for an owner | Fails, five lines missing |
| Setting a relocation budget | Partial, single-person basket only |
- Use them to confirm the two countries are in the same bracket, which they are.
- Stop using them at the point the question becomes ownership.
- Rebuild from your own three largest lines: housing, cover, schooling.
We could not confirm any index that reconciles its basket to an owner’s cost stack, and after reading three of them our position is that none is trying to. That is not a criticism: a volunteer submitting the price of a cappuccino cannot submit a quota ledger, and the tools are honest about what they collect. The failure is downstream, where a 22.7% or a 31% figure gets copied into a relocation spreadsheet and treated as though it settled something. It settles the grocery bill. The 14% withholding on rent, the 4% transfer tax and the 70% cap that binds at exit are still entirely unaddressed, and between them they are worth multiples of the number that prompted the move.
Advantages and disadvantages of reading it this way
Treating the indexes as directional and the ownership lines as decisive gives a usable answer; treating either number as precise does not. The indexes agree Vietnam is cheaper day to day, and they disagree by 8 percentage points on how much, which is a large spread on a small variable.
| Works in your favour | Works against you |
|---|---|
| Three sources agree on direction | They disagree on magnitude by 8 points |
| Both indexes are free and updated continuously | Both are crowd-sourced from single-person baskets |
| Cambodia offers freehold strata in your own name | Cambodia’s 70% cap binds at exit |
| Dollar pricing removes local currency risk in Cambodia | Health cover is unavoidable and unindexed |
What does the gap look like on one household?
Applied to a single foreign buyer on $832 a month, the index advantage is real and small. A 22.7% edge excluding rent is worth roughly $150 a month on the non-rent portion, against ownership lines in Cambodia that run into four figures a year and appear in neither index.
| Line, one owner | Annual figure |
|---|---|
| Index advantage, if it holds | Around $1,800 |
| Withholding on a $700 monthly let, non-resident | $1,176 |
| Service charge, 50 sqm | $300 to $900 |
| Health cover with evacuation | $960 to $2,400 |
Two of those three ownership lines exceed the index advantage on their own, and all three land whether or not the owner ever notices the grocery difference. Our analysis of relocation enquiries is that the advantage is spent before it is earned: a buyer who moves for the cheaper basket and then lets a unit gives back more than the whole saving to withholding alone, and gives back the rest to a service charge that is payable in vacant months. The index is not wrong about groceries. It is simply answering a question that stops mattering the moment the reader becomes an owner rather than a visitor.
Buyer scenarios and red flags
| Profile | What they compared | What they should have compared |
|---|---|---|
| Remote worker choosing a base | Grocery and rent indexes | Visa class available under 55 |
| Retiree, 62 | Monthly averages | Medical ceiling and cover escalation |
| Landlord buying to let | Headline yield | 14% withholding and the service charge |
| Family with one child | Cost-of-living index | Tuition, which no index carries |
Two red flags recur. The first is a decision made on a single index without noticing that the other one disagrees by 8 percentage points, which is most of the claimed advantage. The second is comparing living costs at all when the actual question is ownership, because a country can be 20% cheaper to live in and a materially worse place to hold an asset, and the lines that decide the second question do not appear in any index published for the first.
Frequently Asked Questions
The published indexes disagree, which is the first useful fact. Numbeo puts the cost of living in Vietnam 22.7% lower than Cambodia excluding rent, while livingcost.org puts Cambodia at $832 a month against Vietnam at $637, a 31% gap. Both are crowd-sourced from single-person baskets and neither carries the lines that actually decide an owner's budget.
Because they measure different baskets from different contributor pools. Crowd-sourced indexes weight groceries, restaurants and transport heavily, and both the sample and the weighting shift the answer. A third source, Asia Lifestyle Magazine, splits the difference and puts Vietnam 5% to 20% cheaper on rent, groceries, transport and utilities, which is a narrower claim than either index makes.
Everything that makes ownership different from renting. No index carries a building service charge, rental income withholding, transfer tax, a foreign-ownership quota or a medical evacuation cost. In Cambodia those lines are 14% withholding on gross rent for a non-resident, about $0.50 to $1.50 per sqm a month in service charge, and 4% transfer tax on assessed value.
They are different products rather than different prices. Cambodia offers freehold strata title in your own name with no term, inside a 70% total-area cap per building. That is a structurally different asset from what a foreigner holds in Vietnam, and the comparison belongs on ownership terms rather than on a grocery basket.
It narrows sharply. Health cover with evacuation runs $80 to $200 a month per person in Cambodia and does not appear in any crowd-sourced index, and Cambodia has exactly one JCI-accredited hospital, so the cover is not optional. A 20% gap on groceries is a small number beside a line that size.
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