What your salary actually buys: purchasing-power-adjusted wages across 20 countries
A national average salary in local currency tells you almost nothing about what that money can actually buy — €54,840 in Germany and €25,826 in Portugal aren't 2.1× apart in real purchasing power the way the raw numbers suggest, because prices differ enormously between the two countries too. Converting each country's average wage using World Bank purchasing-power-parity (PPP) factors gives a fairer comparison: what a salary is actually worth in globally comparable terms.
By this measure, Switzerland's average wage is worth the most in real purchasing power ($92,285 PPP-adjusted), narrowly ahead of the US ($86,977) — despite Switzerland's notoriously high prices, its wages are high enough to more than compensate. The Netherlands ($80,136), Belgium ($80,008), Austria ($78,302) and Denmark ($78,090) form a tight cluster next, all comfortably ahead of Germany ($76,285) once cost of living is factored in — a reminder that Germany's nominal wage doesn't translate into the highest real purchasing power among its neighbours.
At the other end, Estonia's PPP-adjusted average wage ($41,019) is the lowest of the 20 countries we track — lower even than Poland ($49,074) and Portugal ($44,937), despite Estonia's higher profile as a tech hub. That gap is worth sitting with: it doesn't mean Estonian salaries are uncompetitive for the cost of living there, but it does mean a straight currency conversion badly overstates how "rich" an Estonian salary is compared to, say, a French one ($60,483) — the real gap in living standards is smaller than a currency converter alone would suggest, but the real gap in absolute purchasing power is still substantial.
| # | Country | Average wage (PPP USD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | $92,285 |
| 2 | USA | $86,977 |
| 3 | Netherlands | $80,136 |
| 4 | Belgium | $80,008 |
| 5 | Austria | $78,302 |
| 6 | Denmark | $78,090 |
| 7 | Germany | $76,285 |
| 8 | Norway | $73,461 |
| 9 | Australia | $72,019 |
| 10 | Ireland | $70,112 |
| 11 | Canada | $67,901 |
| 12 | UK | $66,299 |
| 13 | Finland | $63,053 |
| 14 | Sweden | $61,443 |
| 15 | France | $60,483 |
| 16 | Spain | $57,778 |
| 17 | Italy | $53,864 |
| 18 | Poland | $49,074 |
| 19 | Portugal | $44,937 |
| 20 | Estonia | $41,019 |
Data last verified: October 3, 2026 (reference year 2025).
One note on terminology: this article uses OECD's national average wage figure (AV_AN_WAGE), the same one behind our homepage benchmarks — a different, and usually somewhat lower, figure than the OECD Taxing Wages average used in our net salary calculator's tax brackets (explained in our gross-to-net article). See our Moving Abroad tool to compare your own specific salary this way, rather than the national average.
Figures: reference year 2025, from the datasets described on our methodology page.