About Daily.ky: Methodology & Sources

What Daily.ky is

Daily.ky has been publishing daily-updated data about life in the Cayman Islands since 2025: cost of living, transport, weather, taxi fares, government, and aggregated headlines from local news outlets. Two kinds of content live on the site:

First-party data tools. The fuel price index, rental price index, grocery basket comparison, salary calculator, electricity bill estimator, taxi fare calculator, cruise schedule, hurricane tracker, sargassum outlook, and legislative tracker are all built and operated by Daily.ky directly from official source data.
Aggregated headlines. The home page links out to news stories from Cayman Compass, Cayman News Service, Cayman Marl Road, and Cayman Independent. Daily.ky does not host or rewrite news articles; every headline is a link back to the original publisher.

How we work

Every dataset Daily.ky publishes traces back to a primary source, usually a government agency, a regulator, or the operator itself (e.g. CUC, Port Authority). We don't license data from commercial brokers or repackage paid datasets.

The methodology for each tool is summarised below. Where Daily.ky introduces editorial choices (basket composition, district groupings, the 25% rent affordability ceiling), the reasoning is documented inline on the relevant page or in this section.

Fuel prices

Source: OfReg, the Cayman Islands utility regulator, publishes weekly retail fuel prices for every operating station.

Method: Daily.ky scrapes all 21 stations, computes per-fuel-grade island-wide averages, and identifies cheapest/most-expensive stations. Prices are in CI$ per Imperial Gallon, as published.

Long-term rent index

Sources: eCayTrade and CIREBA public listings.

Method: Listings are aggregated daily, deduplicated, and grouped by district (10 districts) and bedroom count. The published figure is the median monthly rent, not the mean, to reduce sensitivity to outliers. Studios, 1-bed, 2-bed, 3-bed, and 4+ are reported separately.

Grocery price comparison

Sources: Foster's and Hurley's online price catalogues.

Method: Two baskets are compared daily. The branded basket (10 identical name-brand items) measures price differentiation on products where brand is fixed. The Numbeo-aligned basket (15 staple weekly groceries) measures cost-of-living for typical household consumption, using categories that line up with Numbeo's methodology so figures are externally comparable. Kirk Market is excluded because it does not publish prices online.

Salary & rent affordability calculator

Sources: Cayman Islands tax/pension regulations, Daily.ky rent index.

Method: The calculator applies a 5% mandatory employee pension deduction (the Cayman Islands has no income tax) and uses a 25% rent-to-income ceiling, lower than the typical 30% benchmark used elsewhere, to reflect Cayman's higher non-rent costs (groceries, utilities, insurance). USD inputs convert at the fixed bank rate of CI$0.82 per US$1.00.

Electricity bill estimator

Sources: Caribbean Utilities Company published tariff and monthly fuel cost rider; OfReg regulatory filings.

Method: The all-in CI$/kWh rate sums energy charge, fuel cost charge (updated monthly), fuel duty, renewables surcharge, and regulatory fee. The bill estimator multiplies that by user-input usage plus the fixed facility charge.

Health insurance estimates

Source: Cayman Islands Health Insurance Commission annual reports (2022, 2023, 2024), obtained by Daily.ky via FOI request, April 2026.

Method: Reported as the SHIC market summary by single-employee age band. Premiums are individual-rated, not family-tiered, in line with the Health Insurance Act (2021 Revision).

Taxi fare calculator

Source: Traffic (Public Passenger Vehicles) (Amendment) Regulations, 2019 (SL 29 of 2019).

Method: Applies the official regulated formula (CI$5.60 base, CI$0.80 per 0.2-mile increment, plus passenger/luggage/waiting tariffs) to a driving route between two named locations. Routing uses Google Directions where available and OpenStreetMap (OSRM) otherwise.

Cruise ship traffic

Source: Port Authority of the Cayman Islands daily schedule.

Method: Daily ship arrivals at George Town, with passenger counts and a 7-day look-ahead. George Town has no piers; passengers tender to shore.

Rental car prices

Source: Direct queries to 13 rental companies operating on Grand Cayman.

Method: A standardised quote is generated daily for each company across vehicle classes (economy, compact, midsize, SUV) and lead times (3-day vs. 30-day notice). Prices reported in USD for 7-day airport rentals.

Direct flights

Source: Published airline schedules from Cayman Airways, American, Delta, United, JetBlue, Southwest, Sun Country, Air Canada, WestJet, Porter, and British Airways.

Method: Routes are classified as year-round or seasonal based on published months of operation.

Weather, hurricanes & sargassum

Sources: Cayman Islands National Weather Service for forecast and current conditions; NOAA National Hurricane Center for Atlantic basin tracking; NOAA Sargassum Inundation Risk for sargassum outlook.

Method: Forecasts are passed through directly. Hurricane threat assessment for the Cayman Islands is computed from the NHC forecast cone.

Legislative tracker

Sources: Parliament of the Cayman Islands, legislation.gov.ky, and the Cayman Islands Gazette.

Method: Active bills are tracked from introduction through commencement. Each bill is accompanied by a plain-English summary explaining its purpose and likely impact.

FOI track record

Where official data isn't published, Daily.ky files Freedom of Information requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Recent completed requests:

Civil Aviation Authority: aerodrome passenger statistics (2022–2025). Received and parsed; powers the airport pressure widget on the Transport page. Key findings: passenger throughput grew from 928K (2022) to 1.42M (2025), with December peak and September trough.
Health Insurance Commission: verified SHIC premium rate tables. Received April 2026; replaced previously estimated ranges in the health insurance estimator with FOI-verified figures.

Update cadence

Most data is refreshed daily. Some sources update less often:

Continuous: Headlines, RSS feed, weather conditions, hurricane tracker (in season).
Daily: Fuel prices, rental car prices, grocery baskets, rent listings, cruise schedule, electricity rate snapshot.
Daily: Sargassum outlook (NOAA SIR updates daily).
Monthly: CUC fuel cost rider.
As-published: Legislative bills (when introduced), CIAA stats (annually via FOI).

What Daily.ky doesn't do

We don't write original news. Headlines are aggregated and link out to the publisher. We don't paraphrase, summarise, or republish article text.
We don't track Cayman Brac or Little Cayman in most datasets. Where data is Grand Cayman-only (fuel, rent, electricity, taxi, cruise, rental cars), pages say so explicitly.
We don't include Kirk Market in the grocery comparison because Kirk's does not publish prices online.
We don't currently carry advertising, sponsorships, or affiliate commissions. Pages don't recommend specific service providers.
We don't sell or share user data. See the privacy policy for details.

Independence

Daily.ky is independently operated. There is no government funding and no editorial relationship with the news outlets aggregated. Operating costs are covered directly by the operator.

Corrections

If you spot an error (a wrong price, a misclassified district, a stale data source, an incorrect fare, or anything else), please email info@daily.ky with as much detail as you can. Confirmed errors are corrected promptly and the affected data is republished.

Contact

Email: info@daily.ky for corrections, FOI suggestions, methodology questions, source tips.
RSS: /rss.xml: Cayman Islands headlines, with attribution to original publishers.
For LLMs & AI agents: see /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt.