Where to live in Czechia

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How the scores work

Each figure is turned into a 0 to 100 score. Most factors are scored half by comparison and half on a fixed scale. The comparison half ranks the places against each other: the weakest twentieth score 0 and the strongest twentieth score 100. The fixed half measures each place from zero up to the level of the strongest, so a town is not marked zero merely for coming last on a list of good options. Prices and journey times have no natural zero and are scored by comparison only. Public transit is already a percentage of residents and is used as it stands, and cycling is scored on a fixed scale (see the table).

Places are Czechia's municipalities (obce) of 20,000 or more residents, plus Český Krumlov and Mariánské Lázně. Czech municipalities are compact: most are a single town or city, sometimes with a few villages attached, so the figures describe the town itself. Neighborhoods are compared only with other neighborhoods of the same city, so a neighborhood score of 80 in Brno and 80 in Praha are not the same thing. A score is a comparison, not a grade, and the figure behind every score is shown next to it.

Your overall match is not a flat average. Weights are squared, so a factor at 5 counts nearly three times as much as one at 3. The result is stretched so that strong matches separate from middling ones. A place that excels on something you rated 4 or 5 earns a small bonus, shown as "strong fit"; one that does badly on it takes a penalty, shown as "weak fit". Where a place has no figure for a factor, that factor is left out of its match and the others carry the weight.

Badges: Measured a published official statistic or survey result. Derived calculated by us from published data. Editorial written or judged by us: only short notes, which never affect a score. Planned not in the score yet.

Reading the safety score. Violent crime counts twice as much as burglary. Half of the score ranks the places on this list against each other, so the places with the most recorded violence and burglary get little for that half however safe they are by international standards. The other half is absolute, on a fixed scale that does not depend on the other places: no recorded violent crime or burglary would score 100, and the Czech average scores 76. A low score means "more recorded crime than other Czech places", not "unsafe". Across Czechia the police recorded 48 violent crimes (homicide, robbery and intentional bodily harm) and 187 burglaries per 100,000 residents in 2025. The national average includes villages, where little crime is recorded, so most towns sit above it. Crime is counted where it happens, so places that draw commuters, visitors and nightlife record more per resident than quieter ones. The figure behind each score is shown so you can judge the gap for yourself.

Reading the housing figure. The Czech Statistical Office publishes the average price paid per square metre for flats, from the purchase contracts in the land register, by okres (district) and by size of town within the okres, over three years (2023 to 2025). A city of 50,000 or more usually has a figure of its own; smaller towns carry the average for all towns of 10,000 to 49,999 residents in their okres, which can include other towns on this list and towns that are not. It is a guide to what buying a flat costs, not a rent.

Where residents live. Factors measured near home (cycling, nature, transit, restaurants, culture, walking) are averaged over residents, using the Eurostat Census 2021 population grid of 1 km squares (Czech Statistical Office data), spread evenly over 200 m squares inside each municipality.

Reading the train and airport figures. Train counts and journey times come from the published timetables for one ordinary Tuesday, 10 November 2026. Engineering works and seasonal changes move these figures, most of all for smaller stations. Long-distance trains here are the SuperCity, railjet, EuroCity, InterCity and Express trains, RegioJet and Leo Express, and the fast trains (rychlík) of the national long-distance lines; regional, semi-fast and suburban trains are not counted. Stations within 2 km of a place's boundary count. Treat these two factors as a snapshot of this season, and check a route you would rely on.

Neighborhood view uses Praha's 22 numbered administrative districts (Praha 1 to Praha 22), the city districts of Brno, Ostrava and Plzeň, and Liberec's parts of town (Liberec has a single city district), all from the official register of territorial units (RÚIAN). Residents are those of 31 December 2025 for Praha and of the 2021 census elsewhere; Liberec's are estimated from the census grid of 1 km squares, so figures near neighborhood edges are approximate there, and neighborhoods with fewer than 2,000 residents are left out. Neighborhood view uses only the factors that can be measured inside a city.