Living expenses are continuing to squeeze budgets everywhere (thanks, inflation), but of course, not all cities experience these costs equally. There’s a wide gap between the U.S. cities with the highest and lowest cost of living, according to rankings from the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), which publishes a quarterly cost-of-living index across 269 urban areas.
The index covers the cost of housing, utilities, groceries, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous goods and services. The national average is scored at 100, so areas with indices higher are more expensive than average, while those that come in under 100 are less.
As you might expect, the priciest cities are mostly on or close to the northeast and west coasts, while the cheapest are (generally) in the south and midwest. With an index score of 227.8 (more than twice the national average), Manhattan alone well outpaces the cost of living in all other cities on the list, including expensive locales like Honolulu, San Jose, and San Francisco. Axios has a helpful map visualizing the whole list.
U.S. cities with the highest cost of living
Table of Contents
These are the 10 most expensive urban areas and their cost-of-living index:
-
New York (Manhattan): 227.8
-
Honolulu: 179.2
-
San Jose, CA: 171.3
-
San Francisco, Calif.: 169.5
-
New York (Brooklyn): 159.7
-
Orange County, Calif.: 151.2
-
Boston: 148.0
-
Los Angeles-Long Beach: 147.3
-
Seattle: 145.7
-
Washington, D.C.: 145.3
U.S. cities with the lowest cost of living
These are the 10 least expensive areas and their cost-of-living index:
-
Decatur, Ill.: 77.0
-
Harlingen, Texas: 79.7
-
McAllen, Texas: 80.2
-
Ponca City, Okla.: 80.4
-
Augusta-Aiken, Ga.-SC: 82.8
-
Anniston-Calhoun County, Ala.: 83.0
-
Florence, Ala.: 83.0
-
Ashland, Ohio: 83.0
-
Conway, Ark.: 83.1
-
Tupelo, Miss: 83.1
Trends in housing and groceries
C2ER further broke down the most and least expensive cities for housing and groceries and found similar trends to the overall list. Manhattan is—completely unsurprisingly—the most expensive place for apartment rent, followed by Boston, Honolulu, Brooklyn, and San Francisco. The cheapest places to rent an apartment are Ponca City, Okla.; Pittsburg, Kan.; Decatur, Ill.; Florence, Ala.; and Sumter, S.C. The average rent nationally for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,547, an 8.4% increase over the previous year.
Meanwhile, groceries are costliest in California (San Francisco and San Diego) and Alaska (Fairbanks, Juneau, and Anchorage) and cheapest in the Dakotas, Louisiana, and Nebraska.