§Terms of use
Terms of use
Last reviewed: 19 August 2026. By using Costely you accept these terms. If you do not, please do not use the site.
What the service is
A free reference site that compares official statistics between countries and between U.S. states. There is nothing to buy, no account to open and no subscription. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of it at any time.
Our own content
The text, layout, design and code of this site belong to Costely. You may quote figures and short passages, and you may link to any page, provided you name Costely as the source and, where the figure is ours rather than an office’s, say that it is a Costely calculation. Republishing whole tables or pages, or presenting our derived figures as official statistics, is not permitted.
The data behind the site
The underlying statistics belong to their publishers and reach you under their terms, not ours. In outline:
- World Bank (price levels, ICP categories, homicide rate via WDI) — CC BY 4.0, with the World Bank’s own additional terms; third-party indicators inside WDI, such as the UNODC homicide series, may carry further conditions of their own.
- Eurostat (European food price levels, energy prices, earnings) — reuse authorised with the source acknowledged, including commercially; coverage is limited to the EU, EFTA and candidate countries, and we redistribute nothing beyond that.
- U.S. federal sources — BEA, BLS, Census, EIA, FBI and NASA are works of the U.S. Government and lie in the public domain; their emblems are not used and their citation requirements are met on every page.
- Statistics Canada and Passport Index (MIT licence) — under their own terms.
If you reuse a figure taken from this site, the publisher’s terms follow it. The full attributions, licence texts and mandatory notices sit in the sources register on each comparison page and in the methodology.
What you may not do
- Present our calculations as the official output of a statistical office.
- Alter a figure and keep the original attribution on it — the Census Bureau and the EIA prohibit this expressly, and it is dishonest in any case.
- Scrape the site at a rate that degrades it for other readers, or circumvent technical limits.
- Use the site to build a competing database by wholesale copying rather than by going to the publishers, who provide the same data openly.
Embeds
Comparison cards may be embedded on other sites with the snippet the share panel provides. The embed must keep its link back to the source page and its attribution intact.
No warranty, and limits on liability
The site is provided as is. The disclaimer forms part of these terms and sets out the position on accuracy, advice and liability in full. In short: verify anything that matters with the original publisher, and do not treat this site as professional advice.
Indemnity, for business users
If you use the site in the course of a business and your use breaks these terms, you agree to cover the losses and reasonable costs that this causes us. This does not apply to consumers.
Governing law and disputes
[State the governing law and the competent courts for the operator’s jurisdiction.] If you are a consumer in the EU or the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of your own country of residence, and you may bring proceedings there. The EU Online Dispute Resolution platform was discontinued on 20 July 2025 and is therefore not linked here; consumer disputes go to the alternative dispute resolution bodies listed by the European Commission or to the courts. [State whether the operator is willing or obliged to take part in alternative dispute resolution.]
Changes to these terms
Terms may be updated; the review date at the top shows when. Continuing to use the site after a change means accepting the new version.
Contact
Questions about these terms, licensing and corrections: see contact and imprint.