Living in Kraków

Kraków, Poland, about 816,614 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 Kraków against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Kraków has about 816,614 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of PLN 260,000 a year, an employee in Kraków takes home about PLN 160,929 a year (PLN 13,411 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 38.1% (Poland 2026 rules).
• In Kraków the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 25.4 °C in July and the average daily low falls to −2.2 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Kraków has about 44 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 (12) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Kraków reached 35.1 °C at its hottest and −17.4 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 144 days a year in Kraków (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Kraków lasts 8 h 04 min and the longest 16 h 23 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Kraków averages 17.5 µg/m³ a year, 3.5 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in Poland sit at 54.9 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Poland is 78.4 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Poland records 0.80 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Poland, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Kraków without a visa.

What you would take home

Employee, one employer, tax scale: PIT with the tax-free amount and standard work costs (and the youth relief under 26), social insurance (ZUS) and health insurance; joint filing for married couples. Rules for 2026. Sources: podatki.gov.pl: PIT tax scale (stawki i limity), Dz.U. 2026 poz. 592: PIT act, consolidated (art. 22 ust. 2 work costs, art. 30h solidarity levy), Dz.U. 2026 poz. 199: social insurance system act (arts. 16 and 22, rates and split), ZUS: annual limit of the pension and disability base, 2026, Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1461: health care benefits act (art. 79, 9% health contribution; art. 81 base).

• Employees under 26 pay no PIT on pay up to 85,528 PLN (the youth relief): applied when your age is under 26, with contributions and work costs counted against the taxed part only. Without an age, 26 or over is assumed.
• PPK workplace pension (2% employee by default, opt-out possible) is not deducted.
• No municipal income tax in Warsaw or Kraków.
• Newcomers: the return relief (ulga na powrót) exempts up to 85,528 PLN a year for four years for qualifying new residents; set a taxable share to approximate it.

A month in Kraków

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 Poland.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, 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 8 h 04 min, the longest 16 h 23 min.

Every figure

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

Compare Kraków with

• Kraków vs Amsterdam
• Kraków vs Berlin
• Kraków vs Budapest
• Kraków vs Dubai
• Kraków vs London
• Kraków vs Paris
• Kraków vs Prague
• Kraków vs Rome
• Kraków vs Rotterdam
• Kraków vs Torino
• Kraków vs Valencia
• Kraków vs Vienna
• Kraków vs Warsaw

Elsewhere

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

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

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)
• 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 Kraków”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/krakow-pl/, 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: krakow-pl.json.