Cost of Living Calculator
Free cost of living calculator. Compare monthly expenses between two cities and find the equivalent salary needed to keep your lifestyle. No signup.
What is a cost of living calculator?
A cost of living calculator compares typical monthly expenses between two locations and works out how much salary you’d need in one city to match your lifestyle in another. It converts a job offer or relocation into an apples-to-apples number.
How this calculator works
- Enter your typical monthly costs in each location — rent or mortgage, groceries, utilities, transport, and discretionary spending.
- It totals both budgets and shows the monthly and percentage difference between them.
- Enter your current salary in location A; the calculator scales it to the equivalent salary in location B.
- Because the inputs are yours, the comparison reflects your actual spending pattern rather than city-wide averages.
How to use the result
- Plug in your real budget for both cities, not generic “average” figures — rent alone usually dominates the comparison.
- Compare the equivalent salary against the job offer. If the offer in city B is below it, the move is a pay cut in lifestyle terms.
- Add the things this calculator leaves out: income tax differences, state sales tax, healthcare, and the one-off cost of moving.
- If you’re considering a salary negotiation, use the percentage gap as a target — you’d want at least that much more to stay level.
What’s the difference between cost of living and standard of living?
Cost of living is the money side — what your expenses add up to in a given place. Standard of living is the quality side — housing space, commute time, schools, amenities. A city can be cheaper yet offer a worse standard of living for you, which is why salary comparisons should account for both the numbers and the trade-offs.
Common mistakes
- Using national averages instead of your own budget. City indices mask big swings in rent and groceries that matter most to you.
- Ignoring taxes. Gross salary is one number, but take-home pay depends on state and local income tax — a higher gross can still net less.
- Forgetting non-monthly costs. Property taxes, insurance, and car payments aren’t in a typical “monthly expenses” list — fold them in if they differ.
The same “what does a number mean across time” logic applies to pay conversion — the salary to hourly converter helps when comparing an hourly gig to a salaried role, and the sales tax calculator covers the consumption side of a cheaper or pricier city.