How Novad Scores and Ranks Cities
By Novad Data Team · Last updated: February 2026
Process
From Raw Data to Your Match
Collect real data
We pull cost of living, internet speed, safety, weather, air quality, and community data from 6 verified public sources. No surveys of one, no vibes - numbers that can be checked.
Normalize and score
Every data point is normalized to a 0-1 scale so a safety score in Lisbon is directly comparable to one in Chiang Mai. Dimensions are weighted based on what actually impacts day-to-day life quality.
Map your feelings to vectors
When you tell us you want to feel calm, adventurous, or creative, we translate that into an 8-dimensional vector: cost sensitivity, safety priority, weather preference, social need, culture weight, nature affinity, pace of life, and connectivity need.
Match with cosine similarity
Your personal vector is compared against every city's profile using cosine similarity. The cities closest to your ideal are ranked, scored, and explained - with full transparency into why each city matched and where the tradeoffs are.
Scoring
How We Calculate Scores
Every city is scored across 8 dimensions. Each is normalized to a 0-1 scale for direct comparison across all 300+ destinations.
Cost of living
Total monthly cost including rent, food, transport, coworking. Normalized 0-1 where lower cost = higher score.
Safety
Composite of crime index, safety walking at night, worry about assault. Normalized 0-1.
Internet quality
Download speed in Mbps, weighted by reliability. 50+ Mbps = good, 100+ = excellent.
Weather & climate
Average temperature, rain days, and sunshine hours matched to preference.
Air quality
Annual average PM2.5 levels. Lower is better. WHO guidelines as benchmark.
Community & social
Coworking density, nomad community presence, meetups, social scene ratings.
Culture & vibe
Arts, food scene, walkability, nightlife, creativity index.
Quality of life
Healthcare, public transport, purchasing power, pollution.
Emotional Matching
How Feelings Become City Matches
When you tell Novad you want to feel “calm”, that word maps to a specific weight distribution across our 8 scoring dimensions. “Calm” increases the weight on safety, air quality, green space, and lower population density - while reducing the weight on nightlife and social scene.
“Adventurous” does the opposite: it boosts culture score, nature access, and activity diversity while accepting tradeoffs on cost and comfort metrics.
Your emotional profile produces a unique 8-dimensional vector. Every city in the database also has an 8-dimensional vector based on its real data. We use cosine similarity to measure how closely each city's profile aligns with yours, then rank by match percentage.
This is why two people with identical budgets get different results. The algorithm isn't just filtering - it's matching. The output isn't “cities that pass your filters”, it's “cities that align with how you want to live.”
Sources
Our Data Sources
Every city profile is built from 6 categories of verified data. No single source. No made-up numbers.
Numbeo
Cost of living, rent, groceries, transport, restaurant prices
Crowd-sourced data validated against local listings and government reports. Cross-referenced monthly.
Speedtest by Ookla
Internet speed - download, upload, latency
Median connection speeds from millions of real user tests. Updated monthly by region.
OpenMeteo
Temperature, precipitation, humidity, sunshine hours
Historical weather data from meteorological stations. Monthly averages over 10+ years.
IQAir
Air quality index (PM2.5, PM10, ozone)
Real-time and historical air quality readings from ground-level sensors worldwide.
Government & Institutional Data
Safety indices, crime rates, healthcare quality, quality of life
Official national statistics offices, WHO, Numbeo safety index, and institutional surveys.
Community & Survey Data
Nomad community ratings, coworking density, social scene, walkability
Aggregated from nomad surveys, Reddit testimonies, coworking directories, and local reports.
Data Freshness
Cost of living and internet speed data is refreshed monthly. Weather data uses 10-year historical averages updated annually. Safety and quality-of-life indices are updated quarterly from source agencies. Air quality data includes both real-time readings and annual averages. The last full database refresh was completed in February 2026. All monetary values are in USD.
Limitations & Transparency
What we can measure: Cost of living, internet speed, safety indices, weather patterns, air quality, community density. These are verifiable, comparable, and updated regularly.
What we can't measure: The taste of street food in Da Nang. The feeling of walking through Lisbon's Alfama at sunset. How a city's energy shifts between neighborhoods. The friend you'll meet at a coworking space in Chiang Mai.
No algorithm can guarantee you'll love a city. What we can do is narrow 300+ options to the 5-7 most likely to fit - based on real data - and show you exactly why. The final decision is always yours.
If you spot inaccurate data, please let us know at team@hello.novad.app. We take data accuracy seriously and investigate every report.
See the data in action
Take the quiz, get matched, and see transparent scoring for every result.