• More than half the expats in Stockholm (56%) find the attitude of the local population towards foreign residents friendly, while only 45 percent agree in Copenhagen.
• Extremely high prices make living in Stockholm and Copenhagen a struggle for expats — at least six in ten respondents in both cities are dissatisfied with this factor.
• Nearly all expats in Stockholm (96%) and Copenhagen (88%) are pleased with the abundance of green spaces and the clean environment the city has to offer.. With nearly 13,000 respondents living and working abroad, Expat Insider 2017 is one of the most extensive expat studies worldwide. Apart from offering an in-depth analysis of expat life in 51 cities, the survey ranks them by a variety of factors from the areas quality of urban living, getting settled, urban work life, as well as finance and housing. According to all these rating factors, the top 10 cities for expats are Manama, Prague, Madrid, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Basel, and Frankfurt am Main.While Copenhagen and Stockholm leave a lot to be desired in terms of friendliness, expats can be happy about something else: both cities rank in the global top 10 for urban work life, with Stockholm (7th) closely beating Copenhagen (8th). The cities achieve the same level of satisfaction (59%) when it comes to local career opportunities, which is ten percentage points higher than the global average. Similarly, more than seven in ten expats in Copenhagen (73%) and Stockholm (74%) are happy with their work-life balance, with a German expat praising the “many job opportunities and good work-life balance” in Stockholm. Moreover, living standards in both cities are high, with 96 percent of respondents in Stockholm being satisfied with the clean environment and green spaces available to the public. Copenhagen follows closely behind with a respectable 88 percent. The two Nordic capitals rank 1st and 8th out of 51 cities, respectively, for this factor with a far higher level of satisfaction than the global average (67%).
• Unfriendly Locals Copenhagen and Stockholm both rank in the bottom half for getting settled as an expat. However, Stockholm still outranks Copenhagen by 13 places (33rd vs. 46th). More expats living in the Swedish capital (66%) feel at home there than those in the capital of Denmark (52%). In both cities, however, expats tend to find the attitude of the local residents rather unfriendly — about three in ten are dissatisfied with the friendliness in both Copenhagen (32%) and Stockholm (29%), compared to only 18 percent of expats globally. This might also help to explain why both destinations perform poorly when it comes to making new friends: only 30 percent find this easy in Copenhagen, and an even lower 20 percent do so in Stockholm. Moreover, the extortionate local cost of living makes life difficult for expats in both Copenhagen and Stockholm: in fact, six in ten respondents in Copenhagen, as well as nearly seven in ten in Stockholm (68%), are unimpressed with the high prices — significantly more than the global average of 39 percent. One British expat living in Stockholm even says that the “prices in the city are astronomical”.
• Both Stockholm and Copenhagen have a distinctly average performance in this years’ Expat City Ranking, coming in 27th and 36th, respectively, out of 51 cities worldwide. Although living standards and career opportunities in both cities are remarkable, the high cost of living and unwelcoming local residents drag down their final results, as the so-far unpublished Expat City Ranking 2017 reveals.

Top 5 Cities Manama, Prague, Madrid, Kuala Lumpur, and Amsterdam top the list of the best cities for expats: while Prague lags behind on 35th place for getting settled, the other four cities receive good to excellent ratings in this respect. A South African expat living in Kuala Lumpur likes “the easy-going temperament and friendliness of the local people” while an expat from the Philippines appreciates the “very friendly and helpful locals” in Manama. The majority of expats rates the general friendliness towards foreign residents positively