Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Alpharetta's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Alpharetta?
Your $100,000 in Alpharetta has the same purchasing power as $95,749 in the average US city. You'd need $4,251 more here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Alpharetta's cost index of 104, sorted by closest match.
Alpharetta has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. A high-income city, even by US standards and crime statistics come out reassuring are the headliners, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Alpharetta's typical household earns $141,402, which puts it in the top tier of US cities for household income. The bottom of the wage distribution isn't necessarily different from anywhere else, but the median and above sit meaningfully higher.
The reported crime rate in Alpharetta runs about 1,582 per 100,000 residents — meaningfully below the national norm. People who care about safety as a baseline rather than a feature tend to land in cities with numbers like these.
With a citywide Walk Score of 62/100, Alpharetta sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Alpharetta has a college-educated share of about 72% among adults 25+, which is higher than the national norm. It shows up in the local job mix, in the school district's reputation, and in the kind of conversations you have at the coffee shop.
Reasons are pulled from Alpharetta's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
Not really a snow town. With winters averaging 38°F, Alpharetta sits in the mild-cold band where snowflakes appear occasionally and everything melts within a day. Most years see one storm worth talking about.
Cool, not cold. Winters in Alpharetta sit around 38°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Reliably warm. Alpharetta's summer averages around 89°F, the kind of heat where you remember to leave the house before noon for outdoor things and accept that the back of your shirt will be wet by lunchtime.
Alpharetta falls in roughly USDA Zone 9. The zone classification is based on average annual minimum temperatures, so it's the right lookup for whether perennials and trees will overwinter here. Note that this is approximate from our winter-temperature data — check the USDA map for the exact zone before betting an expensive plant on it.
Roughly 1,066 feet (325 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Alpharetta, the practical advice is: have a few days of water and supplies on hand from August onward, know your evacuation route, and don't wait for the news to tell you a storm is "probably nothing" — track the cone yourself.
The headline number is reassuring. Alpharetta's reported incident rate of about 1,582 per 100,000 is comfortably below the US norm of around 3,500 per 100k. Specific neighborhoods always vary, but the broader picture is on the safer side.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Alpharetta's index of 104 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 62/100, Alpharetta has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 32 out of 100. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $73,108 to live in Alpharetta the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Alpharetta runs about $1,767/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.