Cost of Living in Google Sheets & Excel — =VERVE("costliving", "California")

What this pulls

Compare US regions from a cell. =VERVE("costliving", A2) returns cost indices and salary equivalents down a column — Sheets or Excel.

It's one of 250+ live sources you reach with a single =VERVE() function — served from APIVerve's production data engine, billed at 1 credit per resolved cell, and refreshed on whatever cadence you set. No API keys to wrangle, no scripts, no exports.

See it in a cell

A real example — the input you type, and the values you can pull from it. Click any cell to see the formula behind it.

costliving.xlsxsample data

B2fx=VERVE("costliving", A2, "searchedLocation")

Location

Searched Location

Cost Index

Searched Location

Cost Index

California

California

118

Texas

103

click any cell to see its formula1 credit / cell

Ways to use it

Live financial model

Drop =VERVE("costliving", "California") into a cell and your model reads the latest number every refresh — no more pasting figures from a browser tab into a stale sheet.

Track a whole watchlist

Fill a column beside your list of tickers or currencies and every row updates together, so a hundred-row watchlist stays current on its own.

Dashboards that don't rot

Point a chart at the cell =VERVE("costliving", "California") feeds and the chart re-draws as the data moves — a finance dashboard that's live instead of a Monday-morning snapshot.

Use it in your sheet

The same function works in both apps — install once, sign in with your key, and type it into any cell.

Google SheetsAdd-on

Install from the Workspace Marketplace, then drop the formula into a cell. Autocomplete suggests the source and its fields.

=VERVE("costliving", "California")

Microsoft ExcelAdd-in

Same source, same arguments, same key — in Excel on desktop, the web, or mobile. Excel namespaces it as VERVE.CALL. Drag to fill a whole column.

=VERVE.CALL("costliving", "California")

Fields you can pull

Add a field name as the last argument to land just that value in the cell.

Searched Location
=VERVE("costliving", "California", "field", "searchedLocation")
RegionPremium
=VERVE("costliving", "California", "field", "region")
Region NamePremium
=VERVE("costliving", "California", "field", "regionName")
Cost Index
=VERVE("costliving", "California", "field", "costIndex")

Premium marks data included on paid plans. On the Free plan a marked field is withheld and a marked input is ignored — either way the cell reads #PREMIUM(name) instead of a value, so a gated answer can never be mistaken for a real one. Everything unmarked works on every plan. Compare plans

Cost of Living, answered

Everything you need to wire it into a sheet.

How do I pull Cost of Living into a spreadsheet?

Install the VerveSheets add-on, sign in with your key, and type =VERVE("costliving", "California") into any cell. The same function works in Google Sheets and Excel — no scripts, no API wiring.

How many credits does each Cost of Living cell cost?

Each resolved cell costs 1 credit. Filling a column of ten rows costs ten times that; a cell only re-bills when it actually refreshes, so a static sheet doesn't keep charging.

Can I fill a whole column at once?

Yes. Reference a range instead of a single cell — e.g. point Cost of Living at A2:A50 — and it returns a value for every row in one call, or just drag =VERVE("costliving", "California") down like any spreadsheet function.

Does Cost of Living work in Excel as well as Google Sheets?

Yes. It's the same =VERVE() function with the same arguments and the same key in both — build a sheet in one and it behaves identically in the other.

How current is the data?

Cost of Living is served live from APIVerve's production data engine, and cells recalculate on the refresh cadence you choose — every open, hourly, or every 30 minutes. It draws on 4 regions and refreshes on the schedule you set.

Where does the data come from, and what shows on my bill?

VerveSheets runs on APIVerve, our production data engine; Cost of Living is one of 300+ sources on the same key. Invoices and card statements show APIVERVE.

Cost of Living

Live financial model

Track a whole watchlist

Dashboards that don't rot

Cost of Living, answered

Put Cost of Living in your next spreadsheet. Add the extension, paste the formula, and the cell keeps itself current.

Scaling up?