Midwest ranking
Cheapest cities in South Dakota
Rankings for South Dakota will appear here once the ingest scripts run.
All South Dakota 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 South Dakota?
Why do people move to South Dakota? The most common reasons line up with what the data and geography support: no state income tax, four real seasons, including winter, plus 1 more. The rest is below.
No state income tax
South Dakota is one of just nine US states with no state income tax on wages. For a household earning $100,000, that's typically several thousand dollars a year that stay in the account instead of going to a state revenue department — and it stacks every year you live here.
Four real seasons, including winter
South Dakota has the full four-season rotation, with winters that are cold enough to matter — meaning real snow, real ski resorts, and a culture that's built around it instead of pretending it isn't happening. If winter is a thing you actively like, this is the side of the country to be on.
Space, in a way most of the country doesn't have
South Dakota is one of the least densely populated states in the country, which sounds abstract until you've driven through it. Empty highways, big skies, no traffic, and the kind of nature-to-people ratio you can't really replicate by moving to the suburbs of a bigger metro.
Reasons reflect aggregated city data for South Dakota (Census ACS, BLS, BEA) plus well-known state-level geography. We only list points that are actually supported — different states show different sections.