Price per square metre is the standard way to compare property fairly, because it strips out the effect of size and lets two very different listings sit side by side. Compare rent or purchase prices fairly - different area units, different property types, even different countries and currencies - normalized to one real number, with room to account for the amenities that justify a higher price. Add as many as you like: a place in Vietnam, one in Portugal, one in Mexico, and your own home as the benchmark, all ranked per square metre in a single currency.
These are two different questions, and the toggle above decides which one you are asking. What you'll actually pay is the full asking price - the number on the cheque. If a place costs more because it has covered parking and you want covered parking, that money is buying you something real, not distorting the comparison. Like-for-like on space subtracts what you name as paying for extras, leaving a rate for the space itself. That is closer to the adjustment used in appraisal-style comparisons, and it is useful for judging whether a price is fair - but it is not what you will hand over at settlement.
Most people should start with what they'll actually pay, which is why it is the default. Switch to like-for-like when the question is "is this priced sensibly for the floor area," not "which one should I buy."
The part that's easy to miss: check every property for this, not just the one that obviously has an extra. It's natural to notice the property with the visible gym and adjust for it, while quietly not noticing that another property has a better location or a newer building - those are real value too, and skipping the adjustment on one side just moves the unfairness rather than removing it.
Every area unit here uses this site's own conversion engine - the same exact factors used everywhere else - so square feet, square metres, square yards, and the old square rod (still called a perch in some places) all convert to a genuinely comparable number, not an approximation. Works the same way whether you're comparing rent or purchase price - switch the toggle above and the labels update to match.
If you're comparing across countries - what you're paying now against a place in Lisbon, or Bali, or Mexico City - each property can be priced in its own currency, and this converts everything to one currency using the same live exchange rate feed as this site's currency converter. A currency rate moves daily though, so treat the comparison as accurate for right now, not something to lock into a decision you're making months out.
Right now this tool only compares the numbers you type in - it has no sense of whether $3,200 a month is a good deal in Sydney or a bad one, because it doesn't carry any reference data of its own. Adding real median price-per-area figures by city is genuinely possible, but doing it properly - official land registry and rental index data, sourced and dated the way the rest of this site is, not scraped estimates - is real research, not a quick add.
Convert both to price per square metre in the same currency. That strips out the effect of size and lets a 60 m² apartment be compared honestly with a 200 m² house.
Total price tells you what something costs, not whether it is good value. Price per square metre is what lets you compare listings of different sizes, and across different countries.