Cost of living · 200 US cities · 2026
Real cost-of-living figures for 200 US cities, computed from BLS, HUD, and Census Bureau data using the 50/30/20 budget rule. No estimates, no surveys — just the numbers.
Featured cities
Annual salary needed to cover needs, wants, and savings — based on the 50/30/20 rule applied to local cost data.
Most affordable
The cities where your salary stretches furthest, ranked by the lowest annual figure needed to live comfortably.
| # | City | State | Salary needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Huntington | WV | $78,386 |
| 2 | Youngstown | OH | $78,869 |
| 3 | Charleston | WV | $79,898 |
| 4 | Hattiesburg | MS | $80,162 |
| 5 | Flint | MI | $80,309 |
| 6 | Peoria | IL | $80,453 |
| 7 | Topeka | KS | $80,885 |
| 8 | Mobile | AL | $81,026 |
| 9 | Columbus | GA | $81,146 |
| 10 | Cedar Rapids | IA | $81,221 |
Highest cost
The cities demanding the most from your paycheck, ranked from most expensive down.
| # | City | State | Salary needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Francisco | CA | $155,609 |
| 2 | San Jose | CA | $152,705 |
| 3 | San Diego | CA | $138,304 |
| 4 | Honolulu | HI | $138,084 |
| 5 | Long Beach | CA | $137,603 |
| 6 | Los Angeles | CA | $137,603 |
| 7 | Boston | MA | $132,853 |
| 8 | Seattle | WA | $130,145 |
| 9 | New York | NY | $124,141 |
| 10 | Anchorage | AK | $123,354 |
Ranked lists
Four data-driven lists built from the same salary figures, each answering a different question about where to live.
Why CityWage
Every figure on the site is traceable to a named public source. Housing comes from HUD Fair Market Rents at the 2-bedroom level. Food, transport, healthcare, and utilities come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, regionalized where BLS publishes the data that way. Median local salaries come from BLS Occupational Employment Statistics by metro area. We don't blend in survey data, we don't cherry-pick favorable benchmarks, and we don't accept payment for placement.
Because the 50/30/20 framework covers savings and discretionary spending in addition to bare needs, our salary numbers tend to run higher than sites that report only operating costs. That's by design. A number that hides the savings bucket understates what a household needs to stay financially healthy over time.
The per-city prose isn't a generic template. It calls out specific cost lines, gestures at neighborhoods that shape the rent distribution, and ends each section on a concrete data point rather than a tidy summary. It's meant to give you the texture behind the headline figure, what the number actually feels like on the ground in that city.
Source data refreshes weekly. Salary figures recompute monthly. The full breakdown of which source feeds which line item lives on the methodology page.
What "comfortable" means
The CityWage figure isn't a survival number and it isn't a luxury number. It comes from the 50/30/20 rule, where half of take-home pay covers actual needs (rent on a 2-bedroom, groceries, transportation, healthcare, utilities, and the assorted necessities that don't fit anywhere else), 30% goes to wants (eating out, a gym you actually use, the trip you booked last month), and the last 20% is savings and investments. Most cost-of-living tools stop at the needs line and call it done.
That's why our numbers tend to run higher than the headline estimates you'll see elsewhere. A salary that only covers operating costs leaves you one car repair away from a credit card balance. A salary that funds all three buckets is the figure most people actually mean when they say "comfortable", bills paid, a few indulgences, and a real cushion building behind it.
Data last refreshed: July 2026