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Anybody wishing to position Bafatá (Guinea-Bissau), Berlin (Germany) and Tallinn (Estonia) side by side would encounter a number of reasons why these cities should not be compared. To unmake such hesitations, this article offers a conceptual and methodological exploration of the ways in which these cities might be analysed comparatively through a methodological strategy termed multi-sited individualising comparison. This exploratory approach allows to talk across individual research projects in different sites. In applying this methodology to Bafatá, Berlin and Tallinn, the authors demonstrate how case studies in these different cities can be compared around a common interest, namely informal processes and their relations to states.