About USA Cost of Living

USA Cost of Living helps people deciding whether to move, take a job in another city, or compare places, using official price data instead of crowdsourced guesses. It covers 387 metro areas and all 50 states plus DC.

Who runs it

USA Cost of Living is an independent website. It is not run by, funded by or affiliated with the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Zillow, any government agency, real-estate company or employer. You can reach us through the contact form.

How we work

• We use only free, official or openly published data, listed with download dates on the data sources page.
• Every formula is on the methodology page. Every number is tagged as official, derived or estimated.
• When data is missing for a place, we say so rather than filling the gap.
• We fix errors and list the fixes on the corrections page.

How the site is paid for

The site has no advertising today. We may add a small number of clearly labelled ads later to cover running costs. Advertising will never change a number, a ranking or a finding.