Cost of living in Canada
A single person living in Canada spends around $1,272/month excluding rent. Per-city numbers below, every figure with its source; rent is shown separately in the Housing sections, by apartment type.
Verified
At a glance
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Dec 31, 2023
- Verified
- Aug 9, 2026
- Method
- Survey of Household Spending 2023, Canada, average expenditure per household: total current consumption CAD 76,750 less shelter CAD 24,671 = CAD 52,079 a year. Personal insurance and pension contributions (CAD 6,328), income taxes (CAD 23,681) and gifts and support payments (CAD 1,465) sit outside total current consumption in StatCan's own classification tree — total expenditure of CAD 108,225 equals current consumption plus those three — so none of them needs a further subtraction. Divided by the average household size of 2.4 (2021 Census) and by 12 = CAD 1,808.30 per person per month, converted at 1 CAD = 0.70351 USD (1 EUR = 1.6203 CAD = 1.1399 USD, data/fx-rates.json) = USD 1,272.
- Notes
- Per-capita basis — total household consumption divided by average household size — which is the convention used for every other country here and is chosen for comparability rather than realism. Someone living alone loses the economies of scale a 2.4-person household enjoys, so the real cost of a single-person Canadian household is higher than this; unlike the US Consumer Expenditure Survey, StatCan publishes no directly comparable one-person aggregate to quote alongside it. With shelter stripped out, transport (CAD 12,090 a household) and food (CAD 12,046) are the two largest remaining lines, which is what a car-dependent geography looks like in a spending table. Home electricity, water and heating are inside StatCan's shelter line and are therefore excluded here along with rent, so this figure omits utilities that the European entries in this dataset include.
Official source
- Data as of
- Aug 9, 2026
- Verified
- Aug 9, 2026
- Notes
- Left null, and the reason is as useful as a number would have been. No named insurer's own rate card or quote engine could be read for a comparable annual policy; every figure that surfaced came from third-party comparison sites, which this dataset does not accept for a priced fact. The product also does not match what this field is for: Canadian 'visitor to Canada' policies are short, day-rated bridge cover for the gap before provincial insurance starts, not a year-round substitute for the public system in the way private insurance works in the UAE or Cyprus entries here. What the public system covers, from the Canada Health Act itself: hospital services, physician services and surgical-dental work performed in hospital. It does not cover outpatient prescription drugs, routine dental or vision care, or most allied health — Canadians get those through employer group plans, which is precisely why no individual comprehensive quote market exists to sample. The waiting period before provincial coverage begins, checked against each province's own site: Ontario none; Alberta three months for arrivals from another province, but coverage from the date residency was established for someone arriving from outside Canada who applies within three months; British Columbia three months from arrival; Québec up to three months, waived for refugees and for countries with a social-security agreement. The Act caps any provincial wait at three months. Note also that Ontario's 'Ontario Health Premium' is not a premium in the insurance sense at all — it is an income-tax surtax of up to CAD 900 a year assessed on the tax return, and it appears in this dataset as a component of the Ontario tax scheme rather than here.
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Dec 31, 2023
- Verified
- Aug 9, 2026
- Method
- The same table and year as the headline figure: the thirteen children of total current consumption other than shelter, each divided by the average household size of 2.4 and by 12, converted at 1 CAD = 0.70351 USD. The annual Canadian-dollar inputs are transport 12,090; food 12,046; household operations 6,014; recreation 5,231; household furnishings and equipment 3,390; health care 3,087; clothing and accessories 2,739; personal care 1,860; tobacco, alcohol and cannabis 1,809; miscellaneous 1,732; education 1,694; reading material 195; games of chance 192. They sum to CAD 52,079, which is exactly the consumption base behind the headline. The USD lines sum to 1,271, a dollar below the headline through independent rounding.
- Notes
- Food merges StatCan's two lines, groceries (CAD 8,659) and restaurants (CAD 3,351). There is no utilities line, and its absence is not an oversight: StatCan groups electricity, water and heating fuel inside shelter, so they leave this breakdown with the rent — which makes the Canadian total look lighter than the US and European entries here, where utilities are itemized separately. Household operations is StatCan's bundle of everyday running costs, and phone and internet at CAD 3,442 a year is by far its largest component.
National household-budget-survey basket. Rent is shown separately below.
Details
Cost of living (single, excl. rent)1,272USD/month, single person, excluding rent6.5
What this measures
Monthly cost of a defined single-person basket (food, transport, utilities, mobile+internet, modest leisure) excluding rent, curated from national statistics office price data and large local retailers' published prices, converted to USD at the ECB rate recorded in fx-rates. The method field of each value itemizes the basket inputs.
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Dec 31, 2023
- Verified
- Aug 9, 2026
- Method
- Survey of Household Spending 2023, Canada, average expenditure per household: total current consumption CAD 76,750 less shelter CAD 24,671 = CAD 52,079 a year. Personal insurance and pension contributions (CAD 6,328), income taxes (CAD 23,681) and gifts and support payments (CAD 1,465) sit outside total current consumption in StatCan's own classification tree — total expenditure of CAD 108,225 equals current consumption plus those three — so none of them needs a further subtraction. Divided by the average household size of 2.4 (2021 Census) and by 12 = CAD 1,808.30 per person per month, converted at 1 CAD = 0.70351 USD (1 EUR = 1.6203 CAD = 1.1399 USD, data/fx-rates.json) = USD 1,272.
- Notes
- Per-capita basis — total household consumption divided by average household size — which is the convention used for every other country here and is chosen for comparability rather than realism. Someone living alone loses the economies of scale a 2.4-person household enjoys, so the real cost of a single-person Canadian household is higher than this; unlike the US Consumer Expenditure Survey, StatCan publishes no directly comparable one-person aggregate to quote alongside it. With shelter stripped out, transport (CAD 12,090 a household) and food (CAD 12,046) are the two largest remaining lines, which is what a car-dependent geography looks like in a spending table. Home electricity, water and heating are inside StatCan's shelter line and are therefore excluded here along with rent, so this figure omits utilities that the European entries in this dataset include.
Private healthcare costno verified data—
What this measures
Median of at least three publicly quoted annual premiums for comprehensive private medical insurance (outpatient + inpatient, ~$100k coverage, small deductible) for a healthy 35-year-old resident foreigner, from local and international insurers. Method field lists the insurers quoted.
Left null, and the reason is as useful as a number would have been. No named insurer's own rate card or quote engine could be read for a comparable annual policy; every figure that surfaced came from third-party comparison sites, which this dataset does not accept for a priced fact. The product also does not match what this field is for: Canadian 'visitor to Canada' policies are short, day-rated bridge cover for the gap before provincial insurance starts, not a year-round substitute for the public system in the way private insurance works in the UAE or Cyprus entries here. What the public system covers, from the Canada Health Act itself: hospital services, physician services and surgical-dental work performed in hospital. It does not cover outpatient prescription drugs, routine dental or vision care, or most allied health — Canadians get those through employer group plans, which is precisely why no individual comprehensive quote market exists to sample. The waiting period before provincial coverage begins, checked against each province's own site: Ontario none; Alberta three months for arrivals from another province, but coverage from the date residency was established for someone arriving from outside Canada who applies within three months; British Columbia three months from arrival; Québec up to three months, waived for refugees and for countries with a social-security agreement. The Act caps any provincial wait at three months. Note also that Ontario's 'Ontario Health Premium' is not a premium in the insurance sense at all — it is an income-tax surtax of up to CAD 900 a year assessed on the tax return, and it appears in this dataset as a component of the Ontario tax scheme rather than here.