Living in Edinburgh

Edinburgh, United Kingdom, about 514,990 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 Edinburgh against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Edinburgh has about 514,990 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of £50,000 a year, an employee in Edinburgh takes home about £38,024 a year (£3,169 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 24.0% (United Kingdom 2026 rules).
• In Edinburgh the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 18.9 °C in July and the average daily low falls to 2.2 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Edinburgh has about 6 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 July (2) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Edinburgh reached 29.4 °C at its hottest and −6.7 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 167 days a year in Edinburgh (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Edinburgh lasts 6 h 57 min and the longest 17 h 36 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Edinburgh averages 4.8 µg/m³ a year, 1.0 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2021).
• Everyday prices in the United Kingdom sit at 92.4 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in the United Kingdom is 81.4 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• The United Kingdom records 1.12 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2021).
• Besides citizens of the United Kingdom, citizens of Ireland (Common Travel Area) can live and work in Edinburgh without a visa.

What you would take home

Employee: income tax (Scottish rates for Scottish cities), employee National Insurance class 1 category A. Rules for 2026. Sources: GOV.UK: rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027, GOV.UK: income tax rates and personal allowances.

• No student loan, pension salary sacrifice, marriage allowance or benefits in kind.

A month in Edinburgh

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 the United Kingdom.
• Citizens of Ireland, under Common Travel Area (Common Travel Area guidance). British and Irish citizens may live and work in each other's country (UK-Ireland Memorandum of Understanding, 2019).

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 6 h 57 min, the longest 17 h 36 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, commute time, monthly transit pass. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Edinburgh with

• Edinburgh vs Berlin
• Edinburgh vs Bristol
• Edinburgh vs Cambridge
• Edinburgh vs Cork
• Edinburgh vs Dublin
• Edinburgh vs Hamburg
• Edinburgh vs Lisbon
• Edinburgh vs London
• Edinburgh vs Lyon
• Edinburgh vs Manchester
• Edinburgh vs Paris

Elsewhere

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

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

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• 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 the Common Travel Area guidance; contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Source: Eurostat, Urban Audit (© European Union). Borgo keeps each city's latest value and converts units where its note says so 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)
• Source: Meteostat (meteostat.net) and its data providers (dev.meteostat.net/providers), CC BY 4.0 (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)
• 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 Edinburgh”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/edinburgh-gb/, 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: edinburgh-gb.json.