How we model the cost of leaving.
No black boxes. Here's exactly how a number on this site is built, and why it's an honest index, not a quote.
Every figure here is a calibrated estimate built from the physics and economics of moving a household across a border, distance, volume, labour, customs, not a number a mover wants you to see.
The cost model
An international move is, at heart, a volume of goods carried a distance, handled by people at both ends, and cleared through customs in the middle. We model each of those as a component and sum them into an all-in midpoint, then express it as an honest low–high range.
- → Transport, a per-cubic-metre rate that scales with great-circle distance and the chosen method, multiplied by your shipment volume.
- → Origin handling, packing, materials and uplift, priced against the origin country's labour index.
- → Destination handling, delivery, unpacking and debris removal at the destination's labour rate.
- → Customs & duties, clearance, documentation and corridor-specific charges.
- → Insurance, all-risk cover as a percentage of declared transport value.
Inputs & indices
Three things drive the spread between a cheap move and an eye-watering one: how far, how much, and how expensive labour is at each end.
- → Distance is computed from country centroids as a great-circle route, a strong proxy for freight cost on a given mode.
- → Volume maps household size to cubic metres, a studio is ~8 m³, a four-bed home ~74 m³.
- → Labour indices capture how much packing, handling and delivery cost locally, normalized so a global mid-market country sits at 1.0.
Shipping methods
The same goods cost wildly different amounts depending on how they travel. We model four modes and pick a sensible default for each corridor:
- → Road freight for short, land-connected moves under ~1,500 km.
- → Sea, shared container (groupage), the value sweet spot for most overseas household moves.
- → Sea, sole-use container, faster and sealed, worthwhile above a three-bed home.
- → Air freight, fastest by far, three to four times the cost by volume.
Localization, the hard part
This is what almost nobody builds properly. A move from Lisbon to Lyon and one from Lagos to London share a word and nothing else: different customs regimes, visa routes, container lanes, pet rules and a different set of movers who actually run the lane.
So a route page isn't a template with the country names swapped. The visa routes, document checklist, cost-of-living basket and recommended shipping mode are all specific to the corridor, which is why a page reads like it was written for your move, because it was.
What it isn't
An indicative index, not a binding quote. Your real price depends on your exact inventory, access at both properties, the season, fuel surcharges and the firm you choose. We're deliberately transparent about the range so you walk into quotes informed, not anchored to a fantasy low number.
Ranking movers
Movers pay to appear on a route, that's how the index stays free, but ranking is editorial and never for sale. We weight verified review volume and recency, claims-and-damage record, on-time delivery and whether the firm genuinely operates the specific lane. A company can pay to be listed; it cannot pay to be first.