The cost of living in every US metro
What a comfortable month costs a single renter in all 387 US metropolitan areas — derived from the government's own price data, not survey guesses. Includes the full ranking, the fastest-inflating metros since 2008, and the open dataset behind it all.
Published July 25, 2026 · data: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 · US Census ACS · full dataset at /dataHow these numbers are made
Most cost-of-living figures online come from crowd-sourced surveys of uneven quality. Ours are derived from the Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parities — the federal statistical program that measures how price levels in each metro compare to the national average, by category. We start from a national baseline for one person living comfortably with their own place — $1,450/month housing, $900 goods, $250 utilities, $800 other services ($3,400 all-in, 2024) — and scale each category by that metro's own price index. The result: a defensible, reproducible figure for every metro in America, not just the famous ones. The methodology page walks through the formula; the raw and derived data are published openly.
These are metro-area averages. A downtown one-bedroom costs more than the metro figure implies; a suburb, often less. Treat each number as the center of a range. The “vs US average” column is simply each metro’s monthly cost against the $3,400 national figure — 150% means life there costs half again the national norm.
The twelve priciest metros
Comfortable monthly cost, top 12 of 387. The gold rule marks the $3,400 national average.
Bars: monthly cost for a comfortable single renter. Gold dashed rule: US average $3,400.
The 20 most expensive metros
| # | Metro | Comfortable single, $/mo | vs US average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | $5,210 | 153% |
| 2 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | $5,080 | 149% |
| 3 | Napa, CA | $5,000 | 147% |
| 4 | San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | $4,800 | 141% |
| 5 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | $4,660 | 137% |
| 6 | Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA | $4,610 | 136% |
| 7 | Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | $4,510 | 133% |
| 8 | Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA | $4,320 | 127% |
| 9 | New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | $4,310 | 127% |
| 10 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | $4,300 | 126% |
| 11 | Urban Honolulu, HI | $4,260 | 125% |
| 12 | Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | $4,250 | 125% |
| 13 | Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury, CT | $4,250 | 125% |
| 14 | Salinas, CA | $4,250 | 125% |
| 15 | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | $4,220 | 124% |
| 16 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | $4,220 | 124% |
| 17 | San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA | $4,210 | 124% |
| 18 | Vallejo, CA | $4,200 | 124% |
| 19 | Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA | $4,160 | 122% |
| 20 | Boulder, CO | $4,150 | 122% |
The 10 least expensive
| # | Metro | Comfortable single, $/mo | vs US average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 378 | Florence-Muscle Shoals, AL | $2,550 | 75% |
| 379 | Shreveport-Bossier City, LA | $2,550 | 75% |
| 380 | Enid, OK * | $2,540 | 75% |
| 381 | Lake Charles, LA | $2,540 | 75% |
| 382 | Paducah, KY-IL | $2,540 | 75% |
| 383 | Dothan, AL | $2,530 | 74% |
| 384 | Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA | $2,530 | 74% |
| 385 | Texarkana, TX-AR | $2,530 | 74% |
| 386 | Hammond, LA | $2,480 | 73% |
| 387 | Monroe, LA | $2,410 | 71% |
The spread is worth pausing on: the most expensive American metro costs a bit over twice the least expensive. That ratio — roughly 2:1 across 387 metros — is the entire arbitrage that geographic-flexibility strategies (remote work, retirement relocation, the FIRE movement's "geo-arbitrage") are built on.
Where costs rose fastest, 2008–2024
Because the BEA series runs back to 2008, we can also ask which metros inflated fastest. The answer is not the famous coastal cities — it's the Mountain West and the small scenic metros that remote work discovered:
| # | Metro | 2008 $/mo | 2024 $/mo | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Falls, MT | $1,740 | $3,240 | +86% |
| 2 | Bozeman, MT | $2,330 | $3,860 | +66% |
| 3 | Napa, CA | $3,040 | $5,000 | +64% |
| 4 | Salem, OR | $2,200 | $3,610 | +64% |
| 5 | Wenatchee-East Wenatchee, WA | $2,280 | $3,660 | +61% |
| 6 | Ithaca, NY | $2,440 | $3,870 | +59% |
| 7 | Ogden, UT | $2,260 | $3,570 | +58% |
| 8 | Corvallis, OR | $2,350 | $3,680 | +57% |
| 9 | Minot, ND | $1,720 | $2,690 | +56% |
| 10 | Bismarck, ND | $1,920 | $3,000 | +56% |
Great Falls, Montana — up 86% — and Bozeman lead the nation, alongside Napa and a band of Pacific-Northwest and college towns. At the other end, several Midwestern and legacy-Northeast metros rose under 20% over sixteen years. The pandemic-era migration shows up in this table more clearly than in any headline.
All 387 metros
The full ranking, loaded from our open dataset (click a column header to sort):
| # | Metro | $/month | vs US average |
|---|
Table data: us-metros-2024.json · history 2008–2024: us-metros-timeseries.json — both free to reuse with attribution to the underlying federal sources.
What your wealth does with this
Divide your net worth by a metro's annual cost and you get the honest version of "how long could I live there?" — that's exactly what the calculator's exchange board does across US and world cities, including the 4%-rule version (could you live there on investment returns alone, indefinitely?). Your number never leaves your browser.
How long your wealth lasts
The years your wealth covers a comfortable life at each metro's cost. Enter a number in the widget above.
Bar caps at 40 years. A gold seal marks 25+ years — roughly self-sustaining at a 4% real return.
Sources
- BEA — Regional Price Parities by metro (public domain)
- HUD — housing datasets · Census ACS
- WorthParty methodology — the derivation, line by line
Educational content, not financial advice. Derived figures; metro averages. ← WorthParty calculator · Privacy · About