Cost of Living by BestNeighborhood

A BestNeighborhood / Terra Lake Data metric: cost of living for every city and zip code in the US, with granularity down to the neighborhood.

By the BestNeighborhood data science team. Last updated July 14, 2026.

Enter your city or zip code below to see the cost of living for any place in the US.

Almost every cost-of-living number published in the United States describes a metro area. Nobody lives in a metro area. People live in a house or apartment on a block, and the cost of living on that block can sit 60 points away from the metro average reported elsewhere for the city.

As is our tradition, the BestNeighborhood Cost of Living Index is measured at the neighborhood level. Technically speaking, we measure at the census block group, which is an area of about 1,250 people. This is guaranteed to give you a more clear idea of what living on that block might cost you or your family rather than trying to guess based on a city with millions of people. Our data is also published in dollars, as an estimated monthly household bill, because an index number alone will not tell anyone what they will actually pay.

• Why the metro average is the wrong number
• How accurate the index is
• Housing decides almost everything
• What it costs in dollars
• What goes into the index
• How the index is calculated
• Limitations
• Data sources

Why the Metro Average Is the Wrong Number

The New York metro area scores 134.3. That single figure covers 14,592 block groups. The cheapest tenth of them score 109 or below. The most expensive tenth score 171 or above. A household comparing those two ends of the same metro faces a gap of more than 60 index points, and the metro average describes neither of them.

Chicago makes the point another way. Its metro number is 99.7, almost exactly the national average, which sounds like a place with no story. Inside Chicago, block groups run from 91 to 111. That band contains the metro-wide average of 117 of America's 387 metro areas. Choosing a neighborhood inside Chicago moves a household's cost of living about as much as choosing among a third of the metros in the country.

This is the reason the index is built at block-group grain. A metro average is an honest summary of a metro. It is a poor description of anywhere a person can actually sign a lease.

Each bar spans the 10th to the 90th percentile of block-group cost of living inside that metro, population-weighted. The dark tick marks the single metro-wide average that most published indexes report. Source: BestNeighborhood Cost of Living Index.

How Accurate the Index Is

Accuracy claims are worth little without a test, so here is the test. Metro areas are held out of training entirely, the model estimates their cost of living having never seen them, and the estimate is compared against observed prices in those places. Across 253 held-out urban areas, the index explains 84% of the variation in cost of living between them, with a typical error of about 7 index points.

That number means more next to the alternatives. Assuming every place costs the average explains nothing. Using the state average explains 26%, because Mississippi and California really do differ, but Beverly Hills and Bakersfield share a state. The federal government's regional price parity measure, the standard free comparison, explains 57%.

Share of cost-of-living variation explained across 253 held-out urban areas, each scored by a model that never saw it during training. Higher is better. Source: BestNeighborhood Cost of Living Index validation.

Accuracy is not even across categories. Housing and groceries are estimated well. Utilities and health care are the weakest, because what a household pays for electricity or a doctor visit depends on rate structures and provider contracts that vary in ways local demographics do not reveal. The composite is the figure the index reports, and it is the figure tested above.

Housing Decides Almost Everything

Roughly 70% of the difference between an expensive metro and a cheap one is housing. Everything else combined accounts for the remaining 30%, and no single other category reaches 13%.

This is why comparisons built on groceries mislead people. A gallon of milk costs about the same in San Jose as in Brownsville. A place to sleep does not. Cost-of-living advice that leads with the price of a burrito is describing the smallest moving part of the problem.

Share of the cost-of-living difference between US metro areas attributable to each category, population-weighted across 387 metros. This measures how much each category moves the gap between places, which is separate from how large a share of a household budget it takes up. Source: BestNeighborhood Cost of Living Index.

What It Costs in Dollars

An index number of 134 does not tell a household what to budget. So each block group also carries an estimated monthly cost for a typical household, anchored to national spending averages and scaled by the local index. Nationally that figure is $4,974 a month.

Set the extremes side by side and the housing finding becomes concrete. A household in the San Jose metro spends an estimated $8,007 a month against $3,863 in Brownsville, Texas. Groceries account for $110 of that $4,144 gap. Housing accounts for $2,753 of it.

Estimated monthly cost for a typical household, by category. Housing runs from $721 to $3,474 across these four places. Groceries run from $455 to $565. Source: BestNeighborhood Cost of Living Index, anchored to national household spending averages.

What Goes Into the Index

The index is calibrated against real-world prices: what identical goods and services actually cost when someone buys them in a given city. Prices are collected for a fixed basket, so a gallon of whole milk in one city is compared against a gallon of whole milk in the next, rather than against whatever people happened to report spending.

Six categories make up the index. They are ranked below by how much each one moves the gap between an expensive place and a cheap one. That ranking is not the same as budget share. Health care sits last because doctor visits cost roughly the same everywhere, not because health care is cheap.

Moves the gap	Category	Examples of what is priced
#1	Housing	Rent for an apartment, the price of a standard single-family home, mortgage costs, and what both run block by block
#2	Everyday goods and services	Restaurant meals, a haircut, dry cleaning, a movie ticket, a vet visit, toothpaste, apparel, household supplies
#3	Transportation	Gasoline, tires, routine maintenance and repair, auto insurance, bus and rail fares
#4	Utilities	Electricity, natural gas, home heating oil, and the heating and cooling the local climate forces on a household
#5	Groceries	Ground beef, chicken, eggs, milk, bread, potatoes, bananas, coffee, cereal, canned goods
#6	Health care	A doctor visit, a dentist visit, prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicine

Beyond the six, each block group carries costs that most indexes leave out entirely: property taxes, childcare, auto and home insurance, health insurance premiums, and college net price. These are reported as separate lines rather than folded into the headline, because they depend on the household. Childcare is a real cost for a family with a toddler and zero for everyone else.

How the Index Is Calculated

The index is built in two stages, for a reason worth stating plainly. Real observed prices exist for a few hundred urban areas, not for a quarter of a million neighborhoods. Pretending otherwise is how cost-of-living data goes wrong.

Stage one: learn what makes a metro expensive

Each of the six categories is modeled separately at the metro level against observed prices for the fixed basket. The models read a wide set of local measurements, including what residents actually pay for housing and utilities, local climate, energy prices, and the composition of the local economy. Validation is leave-one-metro-out: a metro and every area sharing its region are pulled from training together, so a model is never quietly graded on a city it has already seen. Every category is also checked against three baselines, and a category model that cannot beat all three is not shipped.

Stage two: bring it down to the block

Metro-level estimates are then downscaled to block groups using costs measured directly at that grain rather than inferred. Housing is the main lever, since it drives most of the variation, and it is built from what homes in that specific area actually cost on the open market, not from what current residents happen to pay. That distinction matters. A rent-stabilized building and a market-rate building on the same street report very different rents to a survey, and only one of them is the price a person moving in would face. The index answers the mover's question.

Utilities also vary block to block. The other four categories vary between metros and are held constant within one, which is a limitation, not a finding.

Turning the index into dollars

Each category is anchored to a national monthly dollar figure from federal household spending data, then scaled by the local index. The anchors sum to $4,974 a month nationally. Weighted by population across every block group in the country, the dollar layer reproduces that national figure exactly, which is the check that the arithmetic holds.

What is deliberately withheld

Category weights and model specifications stay private. The categories, the accuracy testing, and the limitations are published in full, which is what a reader needs to judge whether the number is trustworthy.

Limitations

Stating these plainly is more useful than a longer accuracy claim.

• The very top of the luxury market is underestimated. Manhattan is unique in the US, and is therefore difficult to model as the data can only tell us so much. Estimates for the most expensive neighborhoods in the country should be read as conservative, but the shading of the map remains accurate.
• Some data is not reported down to the block. Housing and utilities vary block to block. Groceries, transportation, health care, and everyday services are nearly impossible to measure store-to-store, and are thus measured at the metro.
• We are constantly adding the the metric. While important numbers are found, we do not currently measure water, sewer, and trash expenses. These tend to make up a tiny fraction of most American's budget, but water and other metrics may be added as more outlets adopt the BestNeighborhood metric. For now they are omitted rather than estimated.
• BestNeighborhood is one of the few places to report and map Puerto Rico, but in this case it was not possible. We'll work on it.

Data Sources

The index draws on all of the sources below. No single source maps to a single category, and most categories draw on several.