Cost-of-Living Comparison: Compare U.S. Metro Costs

How this cost index works

This calculator compares 45 selected U.S. metropolitan statistical areas using the 2024 BEA Metro Regional Price Parities (RPPs). The U.S. reference level is 100. An all-items index of 115.6 means that the area's overall price level was about 15.6% above the national level in 2024. These figures compare places in one year; they are not a current price quote or a measure of inflation over time.

BEA publishes five related indexes: all items, goods, housing rents, utilities, and other services. The all-items measure covers consumer goods and services, including housing rents. The component indexes help show which kinds of prices differ across metro areas, but they are area-level measures rather than a prediction of any one person's spending. BEA builds the measures from detailed consumer price data, housing-rent observations, and expenditure weights; its methodology guide describes the calculation.

The salary illustration uses the all-items indexes and this ratio: destination salary = current salary × (destination index ÷ current index). For example, $80,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA (103.090) corresponds to about $89,718 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont MSA (115.613): $80,000 × 115.613 ÷ 103.090. This is a simple price-level comparison, not a wage recommendation or estimate of take-home pay.

An RPP is a spatial price index for one period. BEA estimates each year's set independently, so a 2024 value should not be compared with a 2023 value to infer inflation. The selected geographies are whole metro areas, not city limits: for example, the New York entry is the New York-Newark-Jersey City MSA (NY-NJ), and the Miami entry is the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA (FL). The geographic boundaries and average price levels may not match a specific neighborhood or household.

Use the result as a starting point when planning a move, then check current prices and build a budget for your housing, transportation, health, and household needs. The salary ratio does not adjust for your income-tax situation, benefits, debt, or personal spending. This page uses BEA's 2024 MARPP values, linked from the MARPP downloadable data. The selected rows are transcribed from Andrey Soloviev's BEA MARPP transcription CSV, published in U.S. Wage Atlas under CC BY 4.0.