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There is no universally best city for a startup. Choose the place that best supports your next milestones—such as hiring a specialist team, reaching customers, securing relevant funding, or meeting regulatory and infrastructure needs—while keeping operating costs and founder constraints manageable. Compare two or three plausible locations using the same evidence, then test the assumptions that would make a move costly to reverse.
Start with what the company must do next
Write down the milestones you expect to pursue over the next 12–18 months. This is a useful planning horizon, not a rule that fits every company. A startup focused on customer discovery may value proximity to buyers; a regulated business may need a particular approval environment; a deep-tech company may depend on labs, manufacturing, or specialist hires. A famous startup hub is useful only if it helps with the work your company actually needs to do.
For each milestone, list the location-dependent requirements: roles and seniority to hire, likely customers and partners, relevant investors, facilities, approvals, and services. Separate must-haves from preferences. If a requirement can be met remotely or through occasional travel, note that too; a full relocation may not be necessary.
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Compare the factors that affect your company
Startup ecosystems are not just collections of firms. They involve interacting people, organisations, institutions, and processes—including businesses, investors, banks, universities, and public bodies. The OECD’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostics treats finance as one resource within this broader system and its first-edition pilot covers 38 OECD countries. That national scope can help frame a location, but it is not a definitive ranking of cities.
Talent
Identify the specific roles, experience levels, and hiring dates you need. For each city, investigate the relevant local recruiting pool, realistic compensation, competition for those people, and expected time to hire. A broad technology-talent score cannot show whether a city has enough people with a particular specialty or whether they will join your company.
Funding
Map investors who match your sector, stage, and likely financing needs. Look for evidence of relevant investment activity, not just a high investor count or a well-known startup scene. Consider how often you would need to meet investors in person and the time and travel cost of maintaining those relationships. An investor’s presence in a city does not guarantee access to funding.
Customers and markets
Assess where prospective customers, channel partners, suppliers, and industry decision-makers are located. Proximity can matter when sales require frequent meetings, local trust, or sector-specific partnerships; it may matter less when the market can be served effectively from elsewhere. Include any regulatory or market-access advantage that is genuinely relevant to your target customers.
Rank #2
Networks and institutions
Look for reachable founders, mentors, universities, accelerators, service providers, and industry groups that match your needs. Ask whether you can get useful introductions and practical help—not just whether those organisations exist. The OECD’s ecosystem framing emphasizes interactions among actors; an institution’s presence is less valuable if your startup cannot engage with it.
Total cost and runway
Build a company-specific model rather than comparing rent alone. Include compensation, workspace, founder living expenses, taxes, relocation, travel, and specialist facilities. Estimate how those costs change runway and what trade-offs they force in hiring or product plans.
Published cost comparisons can be useful as benchmarks, but check what they measure. CBRE’s 2026 tech-talent-market comparison combines wages and real-estate costs using a modeled 500-person technology company with 60,000 square feet of office space. That model can help compare markets on a consistent basis, but its absolute costs should not be treated as a small startup’s budget.
Rank #3
Rules, infrastructure, and founder constraints
Check whether the location works for the actual founders and company: immigration eligibility, labor and business rules, infrastructure, family needs, lifestyle, and the practical cost of reversing a move. These issues depend on the people and jurisdictions involved. Verify legal requirements for your specific circumstances rather than inferring them from a general city comparison.
Build a like-for-like shortlist
Choose two or three plausible cities and compare them on identical axes. Weight each axis according to your next milestones; a company that needs a specialized laboratory should not give cost, talent, and infrastructure the same weight by default.
| Comparison axis | Evidence to gather | Question to answer |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant capital | Investors active in your sector and stage; access and relationship-building requirements | Can you reach likely funders at a reasonable cost in time and travel? |
| Required talent | Availability, compensation, competition, and likely hiring time for named roles | Can you recruit the team your milestones require? |
| Customers and partners | Target-account access, sector clusters, suppliers, and channels | Does being there improve customer discovery, sales, or delivery? |
| Operating and personal costs | Wages, workspace, founder expenses, taxes, relocation, travel, and special facilities | How does the location affect runway and founder sustainability? |
| Networks and institutions | Reachable founders, mentors, universities, accelerators, and service providers | Can the company access useful support, rather than merely be near it? |
| Infrastructure and regulatory fit | Facilities, connectivity, relevant approvals, and applicable rules | Can the company operate and grow there without a critical mismatch? |
| Reversibility | Moving, hiring, lease, and household commitments; costs of changing course | How expensive would it be to undo the choice if assumptions fail? |
Use the same definitions and time periods across cities. Record the source and date for each figure, and label estimates separately from confirmed costs. If a figure’s method or reference date is unclear, do not treat it as a current, authoritative comparison.
Use rankings as prompts, not verdicts
A ranking reflects the criteria and weights its creator selected; changing those choices can change the result. The FounderCities 2026 index covers 110 cities and scores seven criteria: access to capital, access to talent, unicorn density, cost of failure, taxes, business environment, and quality of life. Its v0.2 scores are described as editorial estimates calibrated against public ecosystem reports, with a fully data-sourced pipeline identified as future work. Its adjustable weights can help you explore different priorities, but its default order is not a universal recommendation.
For EU country-level context, the European Commission’s 2026 EU Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard covers 36 indicators across six dimensions, including finance, talent, infrastructure, networks and services, regulation, expansion, and impact. It can add policy and ecosystem context, but it is not a direct city-by-city ranking or a global comparison of startup costs.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsBe wary of city figures presented without a clear method or date. For example, the Startup Project comparison page says its cost index sets 100 equal to the US national average, but the retrieved page does not establish the index methodology or data dates. That makes individual city values unsuitable as authoritative current facts.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Validate the assumptions before committing
When practical, visit a shortlisted city or run a time-limited trial before making a difficult-to-reverse move. Use the visit to test specific claims in your comparison rather than treating a short stay as proof of long-term fit.
- Schedule customer conversations. Ask target buyers and partners about access, buying processes, and whether local presence changes the opportunity.
- Test recruiting assumptions. Speak with candidates, recruiters, and relevant employers about availability, compensation, and hiring timelines for your actual roles.
- Meet relevant investors and founders. Find out whether you can reach people who understand your stage and sector, and what ongoing presence or travel would be needed.
- Check facilities and services. Confirm availability, terms, lead times, and practical access for any lab, workspace, supplier, university, accelerator, or specialist service the plan depends on.
- Verify constraints and total cost. Confirm the legal and logistical requirements for the founders and company, and update the budget with real quotes and household costs.
- Review what would trigger a change of course. Before signing leases or relocating, set a date to reassess the assumptions and identify which commitments would be costly to unwind.
Make the decision against milestones, not reputation
Choose the city that clears your must-haves and offers the strongest support for the next milestones at a sustainable total cost. A weighted comparison can make priorities visible, but keep the underlying evidence beside any score: one aggregate number can hide a deal-breaking gap in a critical role, customer channel, facility, or legal requirement. If no option clearly wins, identify the assumption that matters most and test it before committing.
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