I built a free AI-powered relocation tool comparing 95 countries and 668 cities — here's how I did it

The Problem

I was researching international relocation and found the existing
tools deeply frustrating:

• Numbeo is the gold standard but costs $260/month for API access
• Most comparison sites cover 20–30 countries at best
• Nothing gives you a personalised recommendation based on YOUR priorities

What I Built

Placemappr (placemappr.com) is a free relocation research platform:

• 95 countries with composite relocation scores
• 668 cities with weather, air quality and quality of life data
• AI-powered 6-question quiz matching you to your top countries
• Currency and live exchange rates
• Political stability ratings with context (World Bank WGI data)
• Government type, languages spoken, major religions per country
• Blog with data-driven expat guides

Everything is free. No paywalls.

Tech Stack

• Next.js 15 + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS v4
• Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth)
• Groq API for AI matching (free tier — llama-3.3-70b-versatile)
• Vercel for hosting
• Open-Meteo for air quality (free, no API key needed)
• OpenWeatherMap for city weather

Total infrastructure cost: $0/month

Data Sources

• Country scores: WhereNext (CC BY 4.0 — World Bank, WHO, OECD data)
• Cities: SimpleMaps free database (668 cities, population > 1M)
• Political stability: World Bank WGI with disclaimer explaining the index measures physical security perception not democratic strength
• Exchange rates: ExchangeRate-API (free tier)

Interesting Technical Challenges

Token limits with Groq: Sending all 95 countries to the LLM
exceeded the 12,000 token/minute free tier limit. Solution:
pre-filter to 25 most relevant countries based on budget and
region before sending to Groq. Dropped from ~12,500 to ~3,000
tokens per request.

City data without Teleport: The popular Teleport API is now
defunct. Derived city quality scores from country-level data
with population-tier adjustments instead.

REST Countries API redirects: Returns 301 redirects that
Node.js doesn't follow by default. Replaced with a hardcoded
currency map for all 95 countries — more reliable anyway.

Revenue Plan

Currently $0. Planning:

1. Google AdSense (high CPC finance/relocation category)
2. Affiliate links (Wise, SafetyWing, NordVPN)
3. Premium tier (detailed reports, cost alerts)

Current Status

• Live at placemappr.com
• 23/766 pages indexed by Google so far (new domain)
• Working on backlinks and content to speed up indexing

What I'd Love Feedback On

• What data would make you actually use this for a relocation decision?
• Is the AI quiz useful or gimmicky?
• What countries or cities are missing that matter to you?

Happy to answer any questions about the tech stack or data!