Where NOT to go
Above 100 men per 100 women AND above the $885 median cost. 28 of 142 cities fail both tests at once.
Bar length is the ratio; the label inside each bar is that city's monthly cost. Colour is the shared 94/100/112 ratio scale.
What the chart says
- Publishing the bad news is the point. 28 of 142 cities fail both tests, and most are the obvious ones — US metros, plus a handful of expensive Latin American and Canadian cities.
- Cheap does not mean skewed, and expensive does not mean crowded. Santiago at $974 sits on this list beside San Francisco at $4,016.
All 50
Every city failing both tests, worst first.
| # | City | Country | Men per 100 women | Cost / mo | Surplus MEN 20–39 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Diego | United States of America | 111.1 | $3,878 | 52,305 |
| 2 | San Francisco | United States of America | 108.3 | $4,016 | 11,478 |
| 3 | Seattle | United States of America | 109.1 | $3,250 | 32,662 |
| 4 | Austin | United States of America | 109.2 | $2,302 | 20,497 |
| 5 | Dresden | Germany | 111.3 | $1,541 | 8,555 |
| 6 | Santiago | Chile | 114.4 | $974 | 13,471 |
| 7 | Miami | United States of America | 103.8 | $3,413 | 13,659 |
| 8 | Nuremberg | Germany | 107.6 | $1,653 | 5,554 |
| 9 | San Jose | Costa Rica | 108.5 | $1,476 | 329 |
| 10 | Debrecen | Hungary | 110.4 | $1,128 | 6,552 |
| 11 | Punta del Este | Uruguay | 107.6 | $1,534 | 2,208 |
| 12 | Playa del Carmen | Mexico | 112.2 | $948 | 10,156 |
| 13 | Monterrey | Mexico | 108.6 | $1,334 | 14,461 |
| 14 | Denver | United States of America | 104.2 | $2,713 | 5,754 |
| 15 | Phoenix | United States of America | 104.4 | $2,526 | 27,506 |
| 16 | Mexico City | Mexico | 104.5 | $2,100 | 4,379 |
| 17 | Los Angeles | United States of America | 102.6 | $3,629 | 36,608 |
| 18 | Puerto Vallarta | Mexico | 106.6 | $1,395 | 3,384 |
| 19 | Tokyo | Japan | 106.3 | $1,306 | 3,214 |
| 20 | Stuttgart | Germany | 104.2 | $1,906 | 4,001 |
| 21 | Brno | Czechia | 104.9 | $1,530 | 2,431 |
| 22 | Ostrava | Czechia | 106.0 | $1,194 | 2,155 |
| 23 | Minneapolis | United States of America | 102.9 | $2,319 | 5,405 |
| 24 | Heredia | Costa Rica | 104.8 | $1,370 | 149 |
| 25 | Usti nad Labem | Czechia | 105.9 | $1,102 | 769 |
| 26 | Gyor | Hungary | 106.2 | $1,028 | 3,400 |
| 27 | Colonia del Sacramento | Uruguay | 104.8 | $1,326 | 821 |
| 28 | Winnipeg | Canada | 103.4 | $1,771 | 3,635 |
| 29 | Guadalajara | Mexico | 105.6 | $1,065 | 11,897 |
| 30 | Barysaw | Belarus | 103.3 | $1,732 | 6,356 |
| 31 | Quebec City | Canada | 103.1 | $1,518 | 2,235 |
| 32 | Plzen | Czechia | 103.1 | $1,384 | 775 |
| 33 | Pardubice | Czechia | 103.3 | $1,234 | 518 |
| 34 | Berlin | Germany | 101.8 | $2,190 | 9,513 |
| 35 | Leipzig | Germany | 102.0 | $1,579 | 1,920 |
| 36 | Omaha | United States of America | 101.4 | $2,164 | 1,155 |
| 37 | Pecs | Hungary | 102.6 | $1,086 | 1,048 |
| 38 | Budapest | Hungary | 101.9 | $1,345 | 4,370 |
| 39 | Dallas | United States of America | 101.0 | $2,526 | 3,941 |
| 40 | Da Nang | Vietnam | 101.9 | $1,200 | 8,298 |
| 41 | Montreal | Canada | 101.1 | $1,756 | 3,140 |
| 42 | Ceske Budejovice | Czechia | 101.4 | $1,359 | 263 |
| 43 | Edmonton | Canada | 101.0 | $1,882 | 1,560 |
| 44 | Istanbul | Turkey | 101.3 | $1,142 | 33,021 |
| 45 | Liberec | Czechia | 101.2 | $1,202 | 214 |
| 46 | Hradec Kralove | Czechia | 101.1 | $1,219 | 180 |
| 47 | Munich | Germany | 100.5 | $2,442 | 1,261 |
| 48 | Prague | Czechia | 100.3 | $1,767 | 552 |
| 49 | Medellin | Colombia | 100.3 | $1,500 | 1,382 |
| 50 | Ankara | Turkey | 100.1 | $970 | 1,060 |
Ranked by the ratio's excess over 100 multiplied by monthly cost, so a city has to be bad on both axes to rank highly. "Surplus men" is men minus women in the 20–39 band.
Where this is wrong
- The median cost line moves as cities are added. It is a property of these 142 cities, not a fixed price point.
- A bad ratio is not a bad city. Nothing here speaks to whether a place is worth living in on any other axis.
- 23 cities are held back, not missing. Every UK city, and most of Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea, ship census arrays that are not population counts — a few hundred people against multi-million cities, and Belfast computing to 158 men per 100 women off 173 people. They are excluded until the source is rebuilt.
- Population is the linked administrative unit, not always the metro. New York City's census arrays cover a borough, Mexico City's a delegación, Japan's four cities a ward. Those ratios are real ratios of real places, but read them as that unit rather than as the whole metro.
Sources
Age by sex: national statistics offices, per market, at the finest published level — see methodology for the per-country source table. Built with Python and matplotlib; the renderer is geomax/viz/chart_suite.py. Cost of living: Numbeo, single person including rent, July 2026.
The same numbers drive the research desk, where you can filter and sort every city here, and city rankings.
City rankings, ordered by the weighted score rather than by what to avoid.
The per-market deep-dives — 13 tabs of cost, visa, tax, safety and sub-national ratio for one country — are behind the Pro gate. Everything on this page is not.