How do you negotiate salary when you don't know the local cost of living yet?

Converting back to your home currency is the single most common mistake in this exact situation, so you're already ahead just by knowing to avoid it. The number only means something in terms of local purchasing power — what rent, groceries and transport actually cost where you're moving, not what they'd cost back home.

The price guide on each country's page is built exactly for this — it gives you a real sense of local costs so you can sanity-check an offer against actual local life rather than a currency conversion. Worth doing that before you send your counter.

Used a cost-of-living comparison tool as a starting point, then asked two or three local colleagues directly what’s considered fair for the role. The tool got me in the right ballpark, the colleagues got me the real number.

Converting back to home currency was my mistake too, hard habit to break.

I found focusing on savings-rate rather than either absolute number was far more useful — what actually matters is what’s left over each month, not the headline figure in either currency.

Following, have an offer to respond to this week.

Did anyone get real pushback for countering, or is it broadly expected here regardless of the local culture?

OP here — thanks all, went with the savings-rate framing Isabella mentioned. Felt like the first actually useful lens on this out of everything I’d tried.

Asked for a signing bonus rather than pushing base salary higher — easier for the employer to say yes to and it solved my immediate relocation cost problem directly.

Used a recruiter’s market-rate data as a reference point in the conversation, framed as "here's what I'm seeing" rather than a demand. Landed well.

Negotiated an earlier salary review date instead of a higher starting number — meant less risk for them upfront, more upside for me sooner.