Living in Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark, about 1,153,615 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Copenhagen against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Copenhagen has about 1,153,615 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of DKK 450,000 a year, an employee in Copenhagen takes home about DKK 300,741 a year (DKK 25,062 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 33.2% (Denmark 2026 rules).
• In Copenhagen the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 20.7 °C in July and the average daily low falls to 0.7 °C in February (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Copenhagen has about 20 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in August (6) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Copenhagen reached 27.5 °C at its hottest and −7.8 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 126 days a year in Copenhagen (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Copenhagen lasts 7 h 01 min and the longest 17 h 32 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Copenhagen averages 6.9 µg/m³ a year, 1.4 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in Denmark sit at 104.5 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Denmark is 82.3 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Denmark records 0.84 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Denmark, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Copenhagen without a visa.

What you would take home

Employee, no church membership: labour market contribution, bottom, middle, top and additional top state tax, municipal tax (Copenhagen's rate), personal, employment and job allowances. Rules for 2026. Sources: Skattestyrelsen: tax rates and amounts 2026 (skat.dk), Skattestyrelsen: employment and job allowances 2026, Skatteministeriet: kommuneskattesatser 2026 (Copenhagen 23.39%).

• No ATP pension contribution (a small fixed monthly amount for full-time employees) and no labour market pension, which is usually agreed by collective agreement.
• Church tax (0.80% in Copenhagen for members of the Folkekirke) is not included.
• Cities other than Copenhagen use Copenhagen's municipal rate. The 44.57% tax ceiling is applied to municipal, bottom and middle tax (trimming the middle rate where they exceed it), not to the top brackets; this reading of the ceiling is ours.
• Newcomers: the researcher and key employee scheme (forskerskatteordningen) taxes pay at a flat rate plus the labour market contribution for up to seven years; set a flat rate to model it (rate not checked here).

A month in Copenhagen

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of Denmark.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, under EU and EEA free movement (Directive 2004/38/EC and the EEA Agreement). Directive 2004/38/EC, extended to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway by the EEA Agreement. Beyond three months a registration is usually required, but no visa or permit to work.
• Citizens of Switzerland, under Swiss-EU free movement (Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (EU-Switzerland)).

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 7 h 01 min, the longest 17 h 32 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official), commuting by public transport, commute time, monthly transit pass, road deaths, born abroad, walking or cycling to work. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Copenhagen with

• Copenhagen vs Amsterdam
• Copenhagen vs Berlin
• Copenhagen vs Dublin
• Copenhagen vs Hamburg
• Copenhagen vs Helsinki
• Copenhagen vs London
• Copenhagen vs Oslo
• Copenhagen vs Paris
• Copenhagen vs Prague
• Copenhagen vs Stockholm
• Copenhagen vs Tallinn

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Copenhagen
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Copenhagen
• Wikipedia: Copenhagen

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of the EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (State Secretariat for Migration) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of Directive 2004/38/EC (© European Union, EUR-Lex) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (edat_lfse_04, © European Union). Borgo keeps each region's latest value Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Well-being Database (How's Life?), https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/well-being-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Borgo contributors, from official election results and ParlGov party positions (Döring, Huber and Manow, ParlGov 2024 release, CC0) (CC BY 4.0)
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• WMO Member Nations (2023). WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991-2020 (NCEI Accession 0253808), sunshine duration. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/800j-vn07 (No licence attached: NCEI public access with a requested citation, under the WMO Unified Data Policy)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Copenhagen”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/copenhagen-dk/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: copenhagen-dk.json.