I sometimes come across videos in Xiaohongshu, and find a noticeable split in visitors opinions on the price of living in Singapore.
One group looks utterly traumatised, and vents: “Singapore is so much more expensive then Beijing and Shangahi! Don’t come! A small bottle of plain drinking water at from a convenience store costs $1.50! A 15-minute Grab ride cost me $50! We had chili crab and it was fabulous…until we saw the bill was $200!”
Then another video pops up right after. A different visitor is wandering through a normal neighbourhood, looking shocked: “Living in Singapore is so cheap! I bought cold drinks and snacks from the supermarket for pocket change! I took the MRT across the island and it costs less than $2, and muy delicious laksa cost ne $4.50!”
Well truth to the matter, they are both correct.
Singapore is an interesting city. You can live for the cheap, or for the expensive, and it’s all within our 740 sqkm of land. You can also call it a two-tier economic system. Depending on which gear you plug yourself into, you can live like a king while draining your wallet at record speed or live in a clean and safe environment with most cost-efficient, high-quality daily lives in the developed world.
Singapore #1: The Convenience & Scarcity Trap
The first Singapore is the one that regularly tops global expat surveys run by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) or Mercer as one of the “Most Expensive City in the World.”
That tier isn’t an accident. It is the deliberate result of government policy designed to manage extreme physical scarcity:
Private Cars. Because land is scarce, there is a cap on vehicle ownership via 2 weekly bids. An entry-level family sedan in 2026 easily runs $150,000 to $200,000 inclusive of a more than $100,000 COE. In most other countries, that money buys an executive German saloon or a down payment on a landed house.
On-Demand Convenience. By booking surge-priced Grab rides during peak hours or wet weather, paying delivery markups on every meal, and staying strictly within tourist or prime central zones, you are paying top dollar for private manpower in a labor-tight economy.
Commercial Rents & Full-Service Dining. Restaurants in malls or lifestyle enclaves bear massive commercial rent, staff costs, and 9% GST plus 10% service charge. A casual sit-down meal that feels modest quickly crosses $50 to $100 per person. Add alcohol, which carries heavy taxes, and the bill explodes. Let’s not even talk about the extra you’ll be paying for Michelin restaurants…
If you attempt to live a frictionless, purely private-consumption lifestyle in Singapore, the system is calibrated to extract maximum capital from you.
Singapore #2: The Subsidized Engine
Step just a few hundred metres away from the tourist enclaves into an HDB heartland, however, and you enter a totally different world—one engineered over decades to keep prices low for ordinary people:
Hawker Centres. In Western capitals like London, New York, or Sydney, eating out is a luxury that demands tipping and steep markups. In Singapore, hawker centres are treated like public utilities. You can eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a hawker centre for under $15 a day—often cheaper, faster, and healthier than buying groceries to cook for a family of two at home.
World-Class Public Transit: An MRT network with trains arriving every three minutes, that is spotlessly clean and fully air-conditioned costs $2 per journey. With such a reliable transport option, private car ownership stops being a practical requirement and becomes a pure lifestyle luxury, perhaps with the exception where you need the convenience for young kids or elderly parents.
Heartland Supermarkets & Direct Global Logistics. Shopping at Sheng Siong, FairPrice, or local wet markets keeps the price of necessities low. Furthermore, Singapore’s free-trade port status means direct, zero-friction access to e-commerce pipelines like Shopee, Taobao, and Pinduoduo. Everyday household items, phone cables, and hardware arrive straight from manufacturing plants in China at factory-floor prices.
Public Housing. While private condos demand high capital pricing, 80% of citizens live in subsidized HDB flats where town council maintenance and utilities are heavily cushioned by regular government rebates.
Living well in Singapore without constantly stressing about money isn’t about extreme deprivation. You don’t need to swear off air conditioning or eat instant noodles every night.
It’s simply about understanding what you want.
You don’t need to fight the city. You can make deliberate decisions to step into the expensive tier occasionally, while happily running your baseline life in the cheap tier.
Where you might opt in: Perhaps you buy an entry-level car for your daily commute or choose to car share during the specific few years when you have young kids and elderly parents needing regular hospital runs. You pay the toll with your eyes wide open, knowing you’re buying specific utility for a defined life stage, not for the long haul.
Where you opt out: You take the train for your regular work commute. You skip the $25 brunch cafe with the 45-minute queue and get your kopi-o and kaya toast at your local coffeeshop for $2.50. You furnish your study with direct digital imports instead of paying 300% markups at a design boutique in town.
Singapore’s rules are transparent once you see them. The city penalises you brutally if you try to monopolise scarce physical assets or demand full-time private convenience. But it remains extremely cheap if you lean into its shared public infrastructure.
The visitors on social media complaining about $50 rides and $1.50 mineral water aren’t wrong—they just stepped into the first Singapore. And the budget traveller wandering around Sheng Siong eating $4 noodles isn’t imagining things either.
You don’t need a CEO’s salary to live a high-quality, dignified life on this island. You just need to know which Singapore you are choosing to tap into each day.