Tbilisi against Yerevan: 16% cheaper overall, 27% cheaper on housing — and dearer for lunch

On Expatistan's comparison, updated on 28 September 2026, Tbilisi comes out 16% cheaper than Yerevan overall. The category splits do most of the explaining: housing 27% cheaper, clothes 24%, transport 20%, entertainment 10%, food only 5%. Personal care is the exception and runs 8% more expensive in Tbilisi. This is crowdsourced price data rather than a statistical office series, so treat it as a good indication of direction and a rough one on magnitude.

Monthly rent on an 85 square metre flat in a normal area is put at 1,937 lari in Tbilisi against 301,976 dram in Yerevan — an 11% gap, narrower than the 27% headline for housing as a whole. Utilities on the same flat come out at 244 lari against 47,070 dram, a 28% difference. Petrol is 2.86 lari a litre against 505 dram, 21% cheaper. The pattern is that the running costs of a household diverge more than the rent does.

Eating out does not follow the pattern. A basic lunch in the business district is put at 37 lari in Tbilisi against 3,506 dram in Yerevan — 49% more expensive on the Georgian side. Combined with food in shops being only 5% cheaper, that undercuts the simplest version of the story. Tbilisi is markedly cheaper to house yourself in and only slightly cheaper to feed yourself in, and if your guests eat in restaurants every day they may not experience the 16% at all.

For a long-stay tenant deciding between the two cities, the housing and utilities gap is the real argument and it is large. For a short-stay visitor the restaurant line matters more, and the argument mostly disappears. For an owner setting a rent, the useful reading is not the 16% but the fact that Tbilisi rent sits only about a tenth below Yerevan's on the same size of flat — the cheap-city framing is doing less work in the rental market than it does in a headline.