How the Best Cities to Live In bracket works
Rank cities without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — New York City or London? Tokyo or Paris? — and after 31 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. The awkward pairings are the point: they are the calls a drag-and-drop tier list quietly lets you avoid.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 32-slot size (Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 32 options in the field. Entrants are drawn at random each time, so an early upset in one run may never happen in the next. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
31 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 3216 matchups
- Sweet 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-4 minutes start to finish.
All 32 entrants
All 32 entrants are listed below, including New York City, London, Tokyo and Paris.
New York City
USA
London
United Kingdom
Tokyo
Japan
Paris
France
Los Angeles
USA
Barcelona
Spain
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Sydney
Australia
Rome
Italy
Berlin
Germany
San Francisco
USA
Singapore
Singapore
Dubai
UAE
Toronto
Canada
Seoul
South Korea
Chicago
USA
Mexico City
Mexico
Bangkok
Thailand
Lisbon
Portugal
Prague
Czech Republic
Copenhagen
Denmark
Melbourne
Australia
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Austin
USA
Nashville
USA
Denver
USA
Vienna
Austria
Hong Kong
China
Istanbul
Turkey
Cape Town
South Africa
Portland
USA
Mumbai
India
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 32 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 8 completed Best Cities to Live In brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Prague
14W - 7L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 2
Rome
13W - 7L · won 1 bracket
65%
win rate
- 3
New York City
13W - 8L
62%
win rate
- 4
Tokyo
13W - 8L
62%
win rate
- 5
San Francisco
13W - 8L
62%
win rate
- 6
London
12W - 8L
60%
win rate
- 7
Sydney
12W - 8L
60%
win rate
- 8
Chicago
11W - 8L
58%
win rate
- 9
Copenhagen
11W - 8L
58%
win rate
- 10
Bangkok
9W - 7L · won 1 bracket
56%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Trust the first instinct. Overthinking a matchup usually produces a ranking you do not agree with later.
- 2The default run puts all 32 options in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Watch for the option you keep beating reluctantly. That is usually the sign you should undo and reconsider the pick before it.
Best Cities to Live In bracket FAQ
How many options are in the Best Cities to Live In bracket?
The pool holds 32 options. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 31 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 32 slots.
Which options are included?
New York City, London, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Sydney, Rome, Berlin, San Francisco and Singapore, plus 20 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank cities take?
About 2-4 minutes — 31 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other option grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 31 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two options that never met. If you would rather place the options into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 32 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the Best Cities to Live In community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 32 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
What if a option I wanted is missing?
Use the bracket maker: add your own options, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 32 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.