If you’ve ever felt like your rent is quietly eating your entire salary, you’re not imagining it — and depending on where you live in Europe, you might not even be exaggerating.
New data from Deutsche Bank Research Institute’s “Mapping the World’s Prices 2025” report, which tracks net salaries and one-bedroom city-centre rents across 69 cities worldwide, reveals a stark divide in how much of a European paycheck actually goes toward keeping a roof over your head. We calculated the rent-to-salary ratio for 29 European cities, and the results upend a lot of assumptions about which cities are “expensive.”
The two cities where rent wins
Lisbon tops the list in the worst possible way: the average net salary there is €1,210 a month, but a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre runs €1,402 — meaning rent alone exceeds 115% of take-home pay. Istanbul isn’t far behind, at 101.5%. In both cities, an average earner’s entire monthly income wouldn’t cover rent, let alone food, transport or anything else.
That’s a striking data point for Lisbon in particular, a city whose booming tourism and remote-worker appeal have pushed rents up faster than local wages could follow.
The “expensive” cities that are actually more affordable
Here’s the twist: London, Barcelona, and Madrid all land in the 74–75% range — worse, proportionally, than cities widely seen as pricier. Meanwhile Geneva and Zurich, which have some of the highest rents in Europe in absolute terms (over €2,000 a month), sit at the bottom of the ratio table at 29.2% and 34.9% respectively. The reason: Swiss salaries are so high (averaging €6,900–€6,750 a month) that rent barely dents them.
The same pattern shows up with Luxembourg (33.9%) and Frankfurt (34%) — high nominal costs, but high enough pay to absorb them comfortably.
Where the middle sits
Most major capitals cluster in a wide middle band: Dublin (62.1%), Warsaw (56.2%), Prague (53.9%), Amsterdam (49.6%), Paris (44.9%), and Berlin (39.9%) all fall somewhere between “manageable” and “tight.” Interestingly, several Central and Eastern European cities — Warsaw, Prague, Budapest — carry a heavier relative burden than their lower cost of living would suggest, since local wages haven’t caught up with rising rents.
Why the ratio matters more than the price tag
The headline rent figure alone is a misleading way to judge affordability. A €2,586 rent in London sounds brutal until you realise it’s still 75% of local pay — while a €1,402 rent in Lisbon, on paper “cheap” by Western European standards, is actually less affordable than almost anywhere else on the continent. Judged by burden rather than sticker price, Southern and Eastern Europe are where the real affordability crisis is concentrated, not the traditionally “expensive” capitals of the north and west.
Source: Deutsche Bank Research Institute, “Mapping the World’s Prices 2025” (salary and rent data collected through June 2025); rent-to-salary ratios calculated by dividing the report’s rent and salary figures. Euro conversion at current exchange rates.
