Cost of Living Comparison Calculator

When a raise isn't really a raise

A $95,000 offer in San Francisco can leave you with less spending room than the $70,000 job you already have in Cleveland. The paycheck is the number everyone looks at first, but it only means something once you know what a mile of rent, a cart of groceries, and a monthly transit pass cost where you live. This calculator settles that question quickly: given your current pay and two cost of living indexes, it tells you the salary a destination city would have to pay for your lifestyle to break even.

Cost of living indexes package a whole basket of household spending — housing, food, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and often local taxes — into a single number, usually pinned so that a baseline city sits near 100. An index of 120 reads as roughly 20% pricier than that baseline; an index of 85 reads as about 15% cheaper. The calculator ignores your exact grocery list and instead works from the ratio between two of those numbers, which is enough for a fast first pass on relocation offers, remote-work moves, or two job offers in different regions. It all runs in the browser, so you can rerun a dozen what-if scenarios in a few seconds without anything leaving your device.

Filling in the three fields

The three inputs are your current annual salary, your current city's index, and the destination city's index. Put in your gross pay before taxes; if your income swings with bonuses or contract work, use a conservative yearly figure rather than your best month. For the two indexes, the single most important habit is consistency — pull both from the same publisher, the same time period, and the same geography. Mixing a two-year-old downtown figure against a fresh metro-wide one is the fastest way to get a misleading answer, because you are then measuring the gap between methodologies instead of the gap between cities.

Click Compare and you get the equivalent salary: the pay the destination city needs to offer for your purchasing power to hold steady. Compare that number against a real offer. Above it, your money likely stretches further after the move; below it, you are probably trading purchasing power for something else — location, career, family — unless benefits or a shorter commute close the gap. Swap the two indexes and rerun if you want to work the comparison in the other direction, translating a destination offer back into what it would feel like at home.

The proportion behind the estimate

The math is a single proportion: scale your salary by the destination index divided by your current index. Same index in both cities and the ratio is 1, so nothing changes. A higher destination index pushes the equivalent salary up; a lower one pulls it down.

The relationship can be written as:

In this formula, $Sa$ is your current salary, $Ia$ is the cost of living index for your current city, $Ib$ is the destination city index, and $Sb$ is the equivalent salary in the destination city.

Because it is a straight proportion, the formula quietly assumes your spending shifts in step with the index — a fair approximation for a quick check, but only that. Someone whose budget is dominated by rent will feel a move differently from someone whose biggest lines are childcare, tuition, or medical bills, even when both cities carry the same headline index.

Flip the indexes and the same equation runs backward. If you already hold an offer in the destination city and want to know what it would feel like at home, divide instead by the destination index:

It is worth naming the middle step, because it is the piece you can eyeball. The ratio of the two indexes is the cost multiplier that does all the work:

Above 1 the destination is pricier, below 1 it is cheaper, and the equivalent salary is just your current pay scaled by it:

To read that same gap as a percentage, subtract 1 from the ratio and multiply by 100:

A ratio of 1.20 means the destination runs about 20% costlier; 0.85 means roughly 15% cheaper. That framing is handy in a negotiation, where a "10% raise" tied to a 25%-pricier city is really a pay cut in disguise.

The table below shows illustrative indexes for a handful of U.S. cities. Real figures drift year to year, but the spread is the point — the top and bottom of this list are more than two-to-one apart.

Seattle to Houston, worked out

Say you earn $75,000 in Seattle (index 153) and you're eyeing a move to Houston (index 96). Drop those into the formula:

So roughly $47,059 in Houston buys what $75,000 does in Seattle. Not every bill drops by the same slice — the overall environment is just cheaper, so the same lifestyle asks for less income. Run it the other way and the ratio flips: to feel like $75,000 in Houston, you'd want about $119,531 in Seattle.

The close calls are where this earns its keep. Picture $90,000 in Chicago (index 116) against a role in Atlanta (index 110):

Atlanta at about $85,345 keeps pace with Chicago at $90,000. So a $92,000 Atlanta offer nudges you ahead, while $80,000 — despite the cheaper city — quietly leaves you behind. When two offers sit a few thousand dollars apart, the index adjustment is often what decides which one actually pays more.

Where the estimate can mislead you

The answer is only as trustworthy as the two indexes you feed it, and the biggest traps are subtle. Pull the numbers from different publishers, different years, or a downtown figure against a metro-wide one, and you're measuring the gap between methodologies, not between cities. Even with clean inputs, the proportion assumes you spend like the average household the index was built on — so if rent, childcare, or medical care dominates your budget, treat the result as directional rather than exact.

Two things the index may barely touch deserve a second look. Taxes vary a lot by state and locality and don't always sit inside the basket, so take-home pay can diverge from the headline. And your own choices move the needle: taking on roommates, buying instead of renting, or dropping a car for transit can all beat the estimate, while strong benefits — health insurance, a retirement match, tuition help — can make a lower nominal salary the better deal. Use the number to frame your research into rents, utilities, and tax rules, not to replace it.

Reading your equivalent salary

Read the result as the pay a destination city needs to offer for your standard of living to hold. Beat that number and the move likely widens your margin; fall short and you're either accepting a tighter budget or leaning on non-cash perks and a shorter commute to make up the difference. Its real strength is head-to-head: a $90,000 offer can outrank a $105,000 one once the pricier city is priced in.

Just remember the calculator answers a money question, not a life question. Plenty of people knowingly trade purchasing power to be near family or inside a stronger job market, and others chase savings in a cheaper city even at a smaller salary. The equivalent salary simply lets you make that call with the financial side already clear.