Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Bismarck's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Bismarck?
Your $100,000 in Bismarck has the same purchasing power as $114,312 in the average US city. You'd need $14,312 less 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 Bismarck's cost index of 87, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Bismarck, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Living costs come in under the US baseline and a higher-income labor market than the national norm lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 87, a comfortable 13% under the US norm. It shows up most clearly in housing, which is where the gap to coastal metros usually opens up. Median rent in town runs about $969/mo against a typical household income of $76,014, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
The typical household in Bismarck pulls in $76,014 — comfortably above the US median. Combined with the cost of living here, the income-to-expense ratio works out better than a quick look at either number in isolation would suggest.
At about 3.1% unemployment, Bismarck'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.
Average AQI in Bismarck comes in around 34, 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.
Average commute time in Bismarck runs around 16 minutes one-way — short enough that it doesn't restructure your day. Compared to the 45-plus-minute commutes that are normal in major metros, the difference adds up to a real lifestyle gap.
Reasons are pulled from Bismarck'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.
Bismarck does winter the real way. Averages around 12°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Bismarck's winter sits around 12°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Reliably warm. Bismarck's summer averages around 81°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 6, give or take a half-zone. Bismarck's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 6 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Around 1,752 feet (534 m) above sea level. Visitors from the coast occasionally notice a slight shift in how dry the air feels; that's about the extent of it.
Middle of the pack. Bismarck comes in around 3,698 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Bismarck is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 87 versus the 100 national baseline — about 13% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Bismarck scores 49 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 $61,236 to live in Bismarck 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 Bismarck runs about $969/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.