Groceries run $200-215 in Tbilisi and $220-240 in Yerevan

The grocery basket is the only part of this comparison given in money. For a single adult in the first half of 2026, a basket of roughly 2,400 calories a day, excluding alcohol, tobacco and restaurant spending, came to $220-240 a month in Yerevan, $200-215 in Tbilisi and $165-180 in Baku. Everything else in the piece is relative: Tbilisi's overall living costs about 10% below Yerevan's, Baku's housing roughly 30% below Yerevan's, Baku's utilities close to half the price elsewhere thanks to domestic gas and electricity subsidies.

The comparison notes that rents for larger apartments in central Tbilisi districts can match Yerevan's, which is the detail that matters to anyone choosing between the two. A city can be 10% cheaper on average and no cheaper at all in the segment you actually want — a three-bedroom in Vake is not priced by the same forces as a studio in Gldani. If the decision turns on housing rather than on groceries, the average is the wrong number to use.

Baku's cheapness on utilities is explicitly attributed to domestic subsidies on gas and electricity. That is a policy choice, not a structural cost advantage, and policy can change in a budget cycle. Tbilisi's cost position rests on different things — wage levels, import prices, the lari — which move more slowly but are also outside anyone's control. For a comparison that will inform a multi-year decision, it is worth separating the parts that come from how a country works from the parts that come from what a government currently pays for.

The underlying figures come from Numbeo and LivingCost, both of which rely on crowdsourced submissions, and the article gives no index scores, no rent figures and no salary data. That makes it useful for direction and useless for arithmetic. If you are weighing Tbilisi against Yerevan or Baku for a move or a business, use this to know which questions to ask, then price the specific flat, the specific utility bill and the specific salary yourself.