Cost of Living Comparison Calculator
What salary would a move actually need? Enter what each line costs you now and what it would cost there, and get two honest answers — one that keeps your savings the same in dollars, one that keeps them the same in proportion. The cost figures are yours to look up; this page ships no city data.
Your numbers, both cities
Annual, before tax. Both answers below are quoted on the same basis.
These start as placeholders, not figures for any city. Replace them with rents you have actually seen and prices you have actually checked.
On the costs you entered, Where you are moving runs 26.9% more than Where you live now. This figure leaves you the same $50,760.00 a year after costs that you have today.
- Same-ratio salary
- $114,220.18
- Monthly cost difference
- $880.00
- Cost ratio
- 1.269×
| Method | Salary | What it holds constant |
|---|---|---|
| Equal surplus | $100,560.00 | The dollars left after costs — $50,760.00 a year. |
| Same ratio | $114,220.18 | The proportion between salary and costs — 1.269× the costs, so 1.269× the salary. |
The two answers differ whenever your salary is not entirely consumed by the costs you listed. Equal surplus moves only the money the costs actually changed, so your savings stay the same in dollars. Same ratio scales the whole salary, so your savings scale too — which is the more generous answer in an expensive city and the stingier one in a cheap city.
- Costs entered: $3,270.00 a month in Where you live now, $4,150.00 in Where you are moving — both your figures, annualised by twelve.
- No cost index, rent database, or city dataset is used. Nothing on this page knows anything about either city.
- Income tax is not modeled. State and local income taxes vary enough to move the answer on their own, so check them separately.
- Both salaries are quoted before tax, matching the salary you entered.
No city index is offered, and why
Most cost-of-living comparisons hand you a number for two city names and never say where it came from. We looked for a source we could use honestly and freely and did not find one. The comprehensive commercial indices are licensed products that cannot be redistributed. The free crowd-sourced alternatives have unknown sampling and no correction for who happens to submit prices. The strongest public dataset, the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, is genuinely good but measures metro areas and states rather than cities, publishes with a lag of a couple of years, and prices a national basket that may look nothing like your spending.
Hardcoding numbers from any of those would have made this page feel more authoritative while making its answers less true, and an unsourced table is exactly the kind of thing this site exists not to publish. So the arithmetic is here and the figures are yours. The sources below are where to get them; the rent line is the one worth checking against real listings rather than any average.
How the two salaries are calculated
Both columns of monthly costs are totalled and annualised by twelve. From there the two answers differ only in what they hold constant.
Cost ratio = Target costs ÷ Current costsEqual-surplus salary = Salary + (Target annual − Current annual)Same-ratio salary = Salary × Cost ratio- Equal surplus
- Holds the dollars left after costs constant
- Same ratio
- Holds the proportion of salary spent on costs constant
The two agree only when your salary is exactly consumed by the costs you listed. Everywhere else they diverge, and the size of the gap is the size of your surplus — which is why both are shown rather than one being picked for you. A calculator that quietly chose the ratio method would be overstating the raise needed for anyone who saves, and one that chose equal surplus would be understating it for anyone who wants their saving to keep pace with a more expensive life.
$90,000, and costs that rise 27%
Take costs of $3,270 a month now — $1,800 housing, $500 groceries, $350 transport, $220 utilities, $400 everything else — against $4,150 a month in the new city. That is a cost ratio of 1.2691, or about 27% more, and a difference of $880 a month.
On a $90,000 salary, the equal-surplus answer is $100,560: it adds the $10,560 of extra annual cost and leaves the same $50,760 a year after costs. The same-ratio answer is $114,220.18, because it scales the whole salary by 1.2691 and so scales the surplus with it. The $13,660.18 between those two figures is not a rounding difference — it is the question of whether your savings should grow with your cost of living.
These are placeholder figures, not data for any city. Replace them with rents you have seen and prices you have checked.
What this calculator assumes
- Every cost figure is yours. No index, dataset, or price table is consulted, and the defaults are placeholders rather than research.
- All costs are monthly and are annualised by multiplying by twelve.
- Both salaries are quoted before tax, matching the salary you enter. State and local income tax differences are not modeled and can be larger than the cost difference.
- One-off moving costs, a change in commute time, and differences in employer benefits are not priced.
- The current-city total must be above zero, because the cost ratio divides by it.
- Money values are rounded to the nearest cent for display.
Cost of living comparison FAQ
Why does this not have city data built in?
Because we could not source one honestly and freely. The comprehensive city indices are commercial products with licences that forbid redistribution, and the free alternatives are either crowd-sourced with unknown sampling or too coarse to answer a question about two specific cities. The one strong public dataset — the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities — covers metro areas and states rather than cities, lags by a couple of years, and is built from a basket that may look nothing like your spending. Shipping a table of numbers whose origin we could not stand behind would have made the tool feel more authoritative while making the answer less true, so the numbers are yours to supply and the arithmetic is ours.
Which answer should I use, equal surplus or same ratio?
They answer different questions. Equal surplus keeps the dollars left over after costs identical: it adds exactly the annual cost difference to your salary, so your saving in dollars is unchanged. Same ratio keeps the proportion between salary and costs identical: it multiplies your salary by the cost ratio, so your saving scales too. If your salary is almost entirely consumed by the costs you listed, the two are nearly identical. The bigger your surplus, the further apart they move — same ratio is the more generous answer for a move to an expensive city, and the stingier one for a move to a cheap city.
Where do I find real cost figures?
Rent is the line that dominates the answer and the easiest to check: look at current listings in the neighbourhoods you would actually live in, not a city-wide average. For groceries and everyday goods, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys show what households at your income level actually spend by category and region, which is a useful sanity check on your own numbers. For a broad regional adjustment, the BEA Regional Price Parities give a price level for metro areas relative to the national average. Both are linked in the sources below.
Does this account for state income tax?
No, and this matters more than most cost lines. State and local income taxes range from nothing to over 10% of income, so a move between two states can change your take-home pay by more than the rent difference does. Both salaries here are quoted before tax, matching the salary you entered. Work the tax difference out separately and treat it as a second adjustment on top of this one.
What should I put in each line?
Whatever moves when you move. Housing, groceries, transport, utilities, and childcare are the usual movers. Costs that follow you unchanged — a student loan payment, a phone contract, a streaming subscription — can be left out entirely, because putting the same number in both columns changes the difference by nothing and only dilutes the ratio toward 1. If you want the ratio to reflect your real total cost of living, include them; if you want it to reflect the move itself, leave them out.
What if the new city is cheaper?
Then the ratio is below 1 and both salaries come out lower than what you earn today, which is the correct arithmetic answer to 'what would I need there'. It is not advice to accept a pay cut. Two things the numbers do not know: salary bands differ by market for reasons beyond cost of living, and moving somewhere cheaper while keeping your current salary is a different and usually better outcome than moving somewhere cheaper and being paid the local rate.
Once you have the new cost figures, the budget rule check shows whether the new city's spending still fits a workable split, and the true monthly expenses calculator catches the annual bills a monthly comparison misses.
Sources and review notes
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities by state and metro area
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Expenditure Surveys
Methodology last checked Jul 28, 2026. Formula implementation is covered by deterministic unit tests, including the zero-cost case the ratio cannot divide by. The sources above are linked as places to find figures, not as data embedded in this page — no cost index is shipped, cached, or queried. No financial professional review is claimed yet.