Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Boca Raton's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Boca Raton?
Your $100,000 in Boca Raton has the same purchasing power as $78,759 in the average US city. You'd need $21,241 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 Boca Raton's cost index of 127, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Boca Raton? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly no state income tax and paychecks come in above the us average, plus 6 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
Florida is one of the handful of US states with no state income tax on wages, so the only income-tax bite on a paycheck in Boca Raton is federal. For a household earning $100k, that's a tangible four-figure difference every year compared to a comparable salary in California or New York.
The typical household in Boca Raton pulls in $95,570 — 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.
Winters in Boca Raton average about 63°F — short, mild, and mostly just a different kind of nice weather than summer's 90°F. If you've spent a few years dealing with real winters and decided the trade-off isn't worth it, this is what the alternative looks like.
Reported crime in Boca Raton comes in around 1,978 per 100,000 — under the national baseline of about 3,500. Worth digging into specific neighborhoods before settling on one, but the city-level picture is on the safer side.
Bike Score of 83/100 in Boca Raton. That puts it in the small group of US cities where you can do groceries, commute, and run errands on a bike without it being a feat of urban survival.
Average AQI in Boca Raton comes in around 41, 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 Boca Raton runs around 22 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.
Boca Raton has a college-educated share of about 59% 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 Boca Raton'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.
No. Winter in Boca Raton averages about 63°F — jacket weather, not coat weather. Snow on the actual city is essentially unheard-of.
Boca Raton skips winter as the rest of the country knows it. Averages around 63°F mean a jacket is the most you'll need, and that's mainly in the evenings.
Properly hot. Boca Raton's summer averages around 90°F with daily highs that routinely break 100°F. The trick to summer here is starting the day at sunrise and staying inside through the worst of it.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 11. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 11 or colder should survive a typical winter in Boca Raton. (The estimate is derived from our winter-temperature data; the official USDA map uses station-level annual minimums and may differ by half a zone.)
Around 26 feet (8 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Boca Raton's altitude shows up in daily life.
Officially, Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, but most of the action lands between mid-August and mid-October. For Boca Raton, that's when to keep half an eye on the National Hurricane Center forecast cone — and when an actual evacuation plan is worth having in the drawer if you're in a low-lying or coastal neighborhood.
The headline number is reassuring. Boca Raton's reported incident rate of about 1,978 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. Boca Raton's composite index is 127 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.
Boca Raton scores 34 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 31 out of 100. 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 $88,879 to live in Boca Raton 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 Boca Raton runs about $2,170/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.