How our data works
Every number on PostCompass comes from a public source or from the community, and every cell tells you which (hover any metric for its definition and provenance). This page is the full map.
| Data | Source | Method | Refresh | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hardship differential, danger pay, COLA | Office of Allowances, allowances.state.gov (public) | Automated fetch | Weekly | Live |
| Travel advisories | State Department Consular Affairs public data API | Automated fetch | Weekly | Live |
| Local currency trends vs USD | Open exchange-rate data | Automated fetch | Weekly | Live |
| Weather normals (temp, rain, daylight) | Open-Meteo climate archive | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Air quality (PM2.5) | Open-Meteo air-quality archive | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Direct-flight routes per post | Wikipedia airport pages (Airlines & destinations, CC BY-SA) | Automated fetch + parse | Monthly | Live |
| Typical airfares per route | Travelpayouts flight-data API | API, cached per route | Monthly | Live |
| Public holidays | Open holiday datasets | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Inflation & price-level context | World Bank open data | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Seismic exposure | USGS earthquake catalog | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Starlink availability | Official Starlink availability map | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| R&R designations | 3 FAH-1 H-3722, fam.state.gov (public) | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| LGBTQ+ country guidance | State Country Information pages, LGB Travelers sections (public) | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| FS salary schedules & incentive-pay rates | state.gov salary schedules (XLSX) + 3 FAM / 22 U.S.C. citations | Automated fetch + verified constants | Yearly (checked monthly) | Live |
| Pet import requirements | USDA APHIS pet-travel country pages (public), linked per post | Verified link map + community notes | Periodic | Live |
| Post photos | Wikimedia Commons (openly licensed) | Automated fetch | Monthly | Live |
| Schools per post | State Office of Overseas Schools assisted-schools list (public domain) + compiled additions | Automated fetch + manual additions | Monthly | Live |
| On-the-ground conditions (gas, groceries, power, internet) | You, community 5-second reviews and grocery-basket reports | In-app, one-tap answers | Continuous | Live |
| Embassy holiday closure schedules | Each mission's usembassy.gov site (US government, public) | Assisted harvest + human-verified parse | Annual (new schedules each January) | Live |
| Elevation and local time zone per post | Copernicus DEM via Open-Meteo; IANA time zone database | Derived from coordinates, cached | Static (rechecked when posts change) | Live |
| US-visitor visa rules (for visiting family) | Wikipedia visa-requirements table (CC BY-SA) | Assisted extract, human-verified | Snapshot, re-extracted periodically | Live |
| Driving side, driving age, drinking age, road-death rates | Wikipedia (CC BY-SA); World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0) | Assisted extract + automated World Bank fetch | Snapshot + monthly (road deaths) | Live |
| Malaria and yellow-fever guidance | CDC travel health destination pages (US government, public) | Assisted extract, human-verified | Snapshot, re-extracted periodically | Live |
| Pet import: quarantine and titer requirements | USDA APHIS pet travel pages (US government, public) | Assisted extract + curated notes for complex posts | Snapshot, re-extracted periodically | Live |
| Languages: what daily life runs on, and what gets you by | Public references on official and widely spoken languages, per country with city overrides | Curated, cross-checked against editorial notes | Snapshot, corrected from feedback | Live |
| Housing, EFM jobs, morale, everything qualitative | You, anonymous community reviews | In-app, moderated before publishing | Continuous | Live |
What we will never use
- 路 FSBid or any internal government system, even unclassified ones
- 路 Anything requiring a government login
- 路 Individually identifying review data
How reviews stay trustworthy
- 路 Every review is moderated before publishing
- 路 Anonymous by default, role descriptor only, never a name
- 路 Tour years required, so you can weight recency
Spot a number that's wrong or stale? Find the post and use "suggest a correction", community corrections are how the numbers stay trustworthy.