Cost of living in United Kingdom
A single person living in United Kingdom spends around $1,691/month excluding rent. Per-city numbers below, every figure with its source; rent is shown separately in the Housing sections, by apartment type.
VerifiedUpdated
At a glance
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Mar 31, 2025
- Verified
- Sep 20, 2026
- Method
- Built from the Living Costs and Food Survey column for NON-RETIRED ONE-PERSON HOUSEHOLDS (4.95 million of them), the closest published match to this criterion’s single-person profile. Total expenditure across COICOP divisions 1–12 is £378.90 a week. Removed: net rent £66.60 and maintenance and repair of the dwelling £10.10, both from workbook 5 table 2.7 for the same household type, since rent is excluded by definition and repairs fall on the landlord for a renter. Water, energy and service charges stay in. Health and education are also removed because the ONS does not publish them separately for this household type (they account for £13.00 a week of the total), so the basket sums exactly to its published parts. Remainder £289.20 a week x 52/12 = £1,253.20 a month, at the 2026-08-13 ECB cross-rate of 1 GBP = 1.349164 USD = $1691.
- Notes
- Measured spending by people who actually live alone in the UK, not a priced shopping list, so it reflects British habits: transport is the single largest line at $317 a month, ahead of food. Excludes health and education, which understates by about 4%. It is a UK average — London runs well above it and the north of England below.
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Aug 31, 2026
- Verified
- Sep 20, 2026
- Method
- Weighted by each city’s population: London $2607 x 9,122,909; Birmingham $1120 x 1,176,960; Leeds $1055 x 840,550; Glasgow $1137 x 654,330; Manchester $1353 x 588,256, divided by 12,383,005 residents. London is 74% of that weight, so this number is much closer to London’s than to a typical British city’s.
- Notes
- Dominated by London. Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester all sit between $1,055 and $1,353, while London is $2,607 — the widest capital-to-second-city gap of any country in this dataset.
NHS — How to access NHS services in England if you are visiting from abroad
Official source
- Data as of
- Sep 20, 2026
- Verified
- Sep 20, 2026
- Notes
- Not priced. No UK private medical insurer publishes a rate table: Bupa, AXA Health, Aviva and Vitality all quote only through a form that requires personal details, so there is no public figure to take a median of and we do not fill in quote engines. The criterion also fits the UK badly. Healthcare here is not bought — anyone ordinarily resident uses the NHS free at the point of use, and a migrant on a visa of more than six months pays the Immigration Health Surcharge instead, £1,035 a year on most work routes and £776 a year on the Youth Mobility and student routes, which buys full NHS access. Private cover in the UK is a top-up bought mainly for faster elective treatment, not a substitute, so a premium would not be comparable with the figures other countries in this dataset carry.
Curated by SettleMetric
- Data as of
- Mar 31, 2025
- Verified
- Sep 20, 2026
- Method
- The COICOP divisions of the same one-person household column, each converted from £/week at 52/12 weeks a month and 1 GBP = 1.349164 USD. The housing line is division 4 less net rent and less maintenance and repair, so it is water, energy and service charges only. Health and education are not published for this household type and are therefore absent rather than estimated.
National household-budget-survey basket. Rent is shown separately below.
Details
Cost of living (single, excl. rent)1,691USD/month, single person, excluding rent5.2
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
- Mar 31, 2025
- Verified
- Sep 20, 2026
- Method
- Built from the Living Costs and Food Survey column for NON-RETIRED ONE-PERSON HOUSEHOLDS (4.95 million of them), the closest published match to this criterion’s single-person profile. Total expenditure across COICOP divisions 1–12 is £378.90 a week. Removed: net rent £66.60 and maintenance and repair of the dwelling £10.10, both from workbook 5 table 2.7 for the same household type, since rent is excluded by definition and repairs fall on the landlord for a renter. Water, energy and service charges stay in. Health and education are also removed because the ONS does not publish them separately for this household type (they account for £13.00 a week of the total), so the basket sums exactly to its published parts. Remainder £289.20 a week x 52/12 = £1,253.20 a month, at the 2026-08-13 ECB cross-rate of 1 GBP = 1.349164 USD = $1691.
- Notes
- Measured spending by people who actually live alone in the UK, not a priced shopping list, so it reflects British habits: transport is the single largest line at $317 a month, ahead of food. Excludes health and education, which understates by about 4%. It is a UK average — London runs well above it and the north of England below.
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.
Not priced. No UK private medical insurer publishes a rate table: Bupa, AXA Health, Aviva and Vitality all quote only through a form that requires personal details, so there is no public figure to take a median of and we do not fill in quote engines. The criterion also fits the UK badly. Healthcare here is not bought — anyone ordinarily resident uses the NHS free at the point of use, and a migrant on a visa of more than six months pays the Immigration Health Surcharge instead, £1,035 a year on most work routes and £776 a year on the Youth Mobility and student routes, which buys full NHS access. Private cover in the UK is a top-up bought mainly for faster elective treatment, not a substitute, so a premium would not be comparable with the figures other countries in this dataset carry.
City detail pages: Birmingham · Glasgow · Leeds · London · Manchester