Interactive tool
City Cost-of-Living Lookup
Type a city to see its median rent, home value and household income, and how each one compares to the typical large US city.
- $1,425
- Typical rent
- $434,611
- Typical home
- $84,917
- Typical income
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the rent, home-value and income figures here come from the American Community Survey 5-Year estimates released in December 2024, spanning 28,702 cities. Each city is read live from that data and compared against the typical large US city — see our methodology for details.
Across all 28,416 tracked cities, 58% have a median rent more than 10% below the $1,425 typical-large-city benchmark, while 26% run more than 10% above it — search a city above to see exactly where it falls.
How we calculate this
The $1,425 benchmark is the median gross rent across large US cities, the same reference value the calculator below compares your searched city against (±10% = "near typical"). This pre-search stat groups every tracked city into the same three bands using that identical threshold, so the number you see here always matches what the calculator would tell you about any individual city.
Explore more city data
How does the cost-of-living lookup work?
What does "typical" mean in this tool?
Typical is the median across large US cities (population 50,000+): about $1,425 median rent, $434,600 median home value and $84,900 median household income from Census ACS 5-Year estimates. Each city is compared against that yardstick.
Is this an official cost-of-living index?
The rent, home-value and income figures are official Census ACS data for each city. The "above/below typical" percentages are a simple comparison we compute against the national large-city median, they are a guide, not a substitute for a full regional price-parity index.
Why are some cities missing a number?
Census suppresses an estimate when a place is below the reporting threshold for that table. We show N/A for that value rather than estimate it.
Every figure on PlainCities is rendered directly from Census ACS source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on Census ACS source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.