Prague Sees a Dip in Its City Ranking for 2024
- Good Finances Can’t Make Up for Everything
- Better Leave Your Car in the Garage
- Fewer Career Opportunities in 2024?
- No Easy Settling for Expats
- Further Reading
- External References
After steady performances in the higher midfield in 2022 and 2023, Prague falls to rank 36 out of 53 cities in the 2024 Expat City Ranking. Results worsened across most areas of the survey — including expats’ general level of satisfaction: in 2024, 68% of respondents in Prague say they’re happy with their life there. Just last year, this share was 75%.
Good Finances Can’t Make Up for Everything
The Czech capital still lands in 16th place in the Personal Finance Index. More than half of expats (51%) agree that their disposable household income is more than enough to live a comfortable life in Prague, 10 percentage points higher than the global average of 41%.
“I like many things about Prague, including the quality of life, access to the rest of the EU, and the comparatively lower cost of living than in the US.” – US American expat
Better Leave Your Car in the Garage
Next to finances, Prague receives some of its best results for Quality of Life (18th), especially when it comes to getting around. Expats praise both the availability (4th) and affordability (2nd) of public transportation. (Only Luxembourg City receives a better result for the latter, seeing as public transportation is completely free there.1) You might want to make use of those options, though: Prague only ranks 41st when it comes to infrastructure for cars.
Expats feel safe in Prague (91% positive responses vs. 80% globally) and rate the political stability mostly positively (68% vs. 59%). But their opinion on the culinary variety (39th), the air quality (38th), and the quality of medical care (43rd) is rather low. The latter is at least affordable, according to over two-thirds of expats (68% vs. 58% globally).
Fewer Career Opportunities in 2024?
In the past few years, Prague has done well when it comes to Working Abroad, even ranking 12th in 2023. In 2024, that’s no longer the case: Prague fell to an average 24th place in this index, with worse results across nearly all the underlying factors.
For example: In 2023, 76% of respondents rated their personal career opportunities in Prague positively. In 2024, this share is down to 54%. Expats’ view of the local job market (10th in 2023 to 26th in 2024) and the state of the economy (27th to 39th) has similarly worsened — bad news for the comparatively high share of respondents who originally moved to Prague for job-related reasons (43% vs. 35% globally).
Expats at least enjoy high job security (9th) and are satisfied with their working hours (15th). The same can’t be said for their work–life balance: 66% rate this factor positively, down from 79% in 2023. On average, an expat with a full-time job in Prague works 41.2 hours a week, compared to the global average of 42.5 hours.
No Easy Settling for Expats
An area where Prague has rarely performed well is how easy it is to settle in — both in terms of the emotional and practical aspects of finding your feet in a new city. In 2024, Prague narrowly escapes the bottom 10 for the related indices: Ease of Settling In (43rd out of 53 cities) and Expat Essentials (43rd).
The local population comes across as unfriendly to expats (38% say as much, twice the global share of 19%), and less than half of respondents in Prague feel welcome (48% vs. 63% globally). Consequently, expats struggle to make local friends (41st).
“After 8 years in Czechia, I still feel pretty lonely and isolated from Czech society, even though I speak the local language fluently.”– Polish expat
Close to seven in ten expats (69%) share that the language barrier was one of their biggest concerns before moving to the Czech Republic (vs. 35% globally). And not without reason: expats find it difficult to live in Prague without speaking Czech (32nd), which they also consider difficult to learn (52nd).
Results for the rest of the Expat Essentials Index aren’t much better. Expats struggle with the local bureaucracy (41st); can rarely tackle administrative tasks online (42nd); and can’t easily access high-speed internet (44th). Plus, close to two-thirds (66%) regard housing in Prague as expensive (vs. 47% globally).
