Midwest ranking
Cheapest cities in Illinois
Rankings for Illinois will appear here once the ingest scripts run.
All Illinois cities, ranked
Sorted by cost-of-living index — lowest (most affordable) first.
No cities with cost-of-living data yet. Run the ingest scripts to populate this ranking.
Why move to Illinois?
On the data, the answer to "why move to Illinois" comes back to the biggest freshwater coast in the country.
The biggest freshwater coast in the country
Illinois's Great Lakes coastline is a real geographic asset that's easy to forget about until you've lived near it. Summer life in lakeside towns rivals what you'd get on the ocean, the water is fresh (no salt corrosion, no jellyfish), and winter brings lake-effect snow that locals either love or accept as the price of admission.
Reasons reflect aggregated city data for Illinois (Census ACS, BLS, BEA) plus well-known state-level geography. We only list points that are actually supported — different states show different sections.