Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Ashburn's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Ashburn?
Your $100,000 in Ashburn has the same purchasing power as $80,295 in the average US city. You'd need $19,705 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 Ashburn's cost index of 125, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Ashburn, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Above-average earnings, not just for a few people and low unemployment, plenty of openings lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
Ashburn's typical household earns $147,192, 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.
At about 2.7% unemployment, Ashburn's labor market is running on the tight side. Easier to land a role, easier to negotiate, easier to leave one job for a better one — the practical things that matter when you're actually looking.
The reported crime rate in Ashburn runs about 721 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.
Average AQI in Ashburn comes in around 40, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Ashburn has a college-educated share of about 65% 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 Ashburn'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.
Snow is a regular feature, not a surprise. With winter temperatures hovering near 32°F, Ashburn sees enough snowfall that locals don't think twice about it but also enough mild stretches that nobody owns three pairs of boots.
A real winter, but not a punishing one. Ashburn averages roughly 32°F in winter, with the coldest mornings dipping into the single digits a few times a year and most days landing somewhere between "chilly" and "actually cold".
Reliably warm. Ashburn's summer averages around 88°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.
Zone 8, give or take a half-zone. Ashburn's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 8 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Around 259 feet (79 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Ashburn's altitude shows up in daily life.
Atlantic basin storms can form from June 1 to November 30, but the serious ones cluster in August, September, and the first half of October. Residents of Ashburn learn the season's rhythm fast: watch the cone, board up when it's the call, and don't shrug off the slow-mover storms — those are usually the ones that flood.
The headline number is reassuring. Ashburn's reported incident rate of about 721 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.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Ashburn's composite index is 125 versus 100 for the US, with rent and home prices driving most of the gap. Salaries in higher-paying industries usually move together, but the math still tightens for everyone else.
Ashburn scores 31 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Some neighborhoods buck the citywide average; the dense inner cores are usually noticeably more walkable than the city number suggests.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $87,178 to live in Ashburn 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 Ashburn runs about $2,266/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.