Cost of Living in Prague

Lived in Prague for 8 years. It's a beautiful international European city. Never learned Czech, but was fine. Almost all cafes and restaurants have English menus. Superb food delivery apps (Wolt is the best). All the food you can imagine. Vietnamese food is world-class because of the huge Vietnamese population. If you want hipster bars and cafes, there's plenty of that. If you want old-world-charm there's plenty of that. If you want posh luxury there's some of Europes best restaurants and cocktail bars here.

Still very good value for eating and drinking out. But the housing has gotten a lot more expensive. In the end I spent half on my income every month on rent. And you don't want to live in the dead suburbs. But if you can find a good deal in the center you'll be fine. You can walk everywhere. The public transport is excellent in the rare occasions you need it.

It's a walkable and livable city with an extraordinary amount of beautiful architecture and bridges. It's also very green, lots of trees and parks both big and small. Prague is also one of the safest cities in the world, almost feels like a small town in this regard.

Prague is a beautiful city and I like it despite its quirks. I use it as a base in Europe.

It has literally everything you need for long-term living: high-quality food, great nightlife, cool malls with lots of shops, and most people speak English. It even has its own local version of Amazon called Alza, with pick-up stations scattered all over the city, which is great because you usually cannot receive packages in an Airbnb.
The city is very walkable and I love just walking around, looking at the people and the buildings with beautiful ornamented facades & bright colors, and discovering new places.
The transport system is also remarkably good, very reliable and you can go anywhere easily. You probably won't ever need a taxi unless it's very late or you are in a hurry. Because the city is relatively compact, you can get from A to B usually within 20 minutes, which is pretty darn efficient!
Note that Uber Eats does not operate here anymore, but they have an app called Dame Jidlo, which works well.
All of this makes it a very nice city to live in for a few months at a time.

The cost of living is still reasonable, although it has risen a lot recently. Airbnb prices have literally tripled since before the pandemic, and it seems restaurant prices increased ~40%. I suppose this is due to inflation, the Czech crown getting relatively stronger (or devaluing at a slower pace...), the war & the massive influx of refugees.

However, what would otherwise be a beautiful, poetic, romantic historical city, is constantly being sabotaged by the numerous packs of 5 to 20 rowdy tourists (usually >90% or even 100% male) coming to Prague, getting drunk, shouting in the streets, and generally being obnoxious, sometimes even before the sun sets.
When the locals see a group like this, everyone knows they came from the UK/France/Germany to Prague for the cheap beer, the strip clubs, and the decriminalized prostitution at the "sauna club". You will see them too, it will be impossible to ignore them. Their obnoxiousness and disrespect for the people who live here are unacceptable, especially with those super noisy beer bike tours, and I'm pretty sure this is the reason why the locals don't seem to really like tourists here.
Hopefully, Prague becoming more expensive and the fact that the authorities recognized the problem and started cracking down on it will incentivize stag doers and other intellectuals to favor going to Budapest, Bucharest, or Cologne/Hamburg/Frankfurt/Berlin instead. For now, just avoid the historic center & the area around the path to the Prague castle, as the locals do. It is a big overpriced tourist trap anyway.

The second downside is that on top of being hard to befriend locals (reason above), it is kinda hard to meet other digital nomads in Prague because the community seems very fragmented relative to the small size of the city. There isn't really a go-to place or coliving for digital nomads, or a whatsapp group/entity organizing events for DNs that I know of. Locus is taking a bit of an initiative but I hope it grows into something bigger.

All in all, this is a nice place to spend a few months when you need to focus on work or relax & collect yourself. I like that when I go there, I know that there won't be any major troubles, and I will be able to live & work efficiently within an hour after landing at the airport.
Would I spend a whole year there though? Unless I can sit outside on a summer day without a pack of 12 rowdy stag-do sex tourists passing by on a beer bike and destroying my eardrums, probably not.

I visited Prague on more than one occasion and tried something new each time. I really wanted to enjoy it, but unfortunately it turned out to be one of my least favourite cities. Perhaps it was just me, but there was an overwhelming sense of distrust and dislike towards foreigners, you have to try pretty hard to blend in if you want to experience the life of a local & avoid the tourism.
I met some wonderful people and and there’s some cool communities to be part of, but another extended stay just isn’t for me.

My husband and I spent about 6 weeks testing Prague in Nov-Dec 2018 as we were considering it as a semi-permanent base of operations for the next year or two. Honestly it was great and we plan on leaving Malta where we have been for the past year. Pluses - transportation is very good and quite cheap, tons of restaurants, lots to do. People are more reserved, perhaps even a bit suspicious, so I would not say it was an OVERLY welcoming vibe, however there are a lot of expats from the US, CA, UK and more, so I did meet some very nice people and there is a good Expat network there. Not very racially diverse, I noticed this very quickly. Language is somewhat of an issue - unlike say France or Spain where you can figure out some words - in Czech you won't have a clue. Overall though - 2 thumbs up for us!

Possibly the best city to live in Europe, especially in the summer. It's clean, people are friendly, lots of cafes to work, fast internet, lots of Airbnb's, and it's relatively cheap.

Prague is super awesome, it’s a very beautiful city. However, I have learned two things about Prague which I want to share with future travelers and nomads, they are:

- Only use ATMs that has the word “Bankomat” on it, all the other ATMs have really high fees or commission and may even in some cases support organized crime.

- if you need to call the police for some reason, because of e.g. robbery or physical injury, make sure to call the state police or ask for the state police and not the municipal police. The municipal police can be very corrupt and in some cases support organized crime.

That’s my advice, take care.