Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Castle Rock's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Castle Rock?
Your $100,000 in Castle Rock has the same purchasing power as $83,984 in the average US city. You'd need $16,016 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 Castle Rock's cost index of 119, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Castle Rock, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Above-average earnings, not just for a few people and among the safer us cities of its size lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
Castle Rock's typical household earns $135,985, 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 Castle Rock runs about 1,214 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 64/100, Castle Rock sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Average AQI in Castle Rock comes in around 27, 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.
Castle Rock has a college-educated share of about 54% 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 Castle Rock'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.
Castle Rock does winter the real way. Averages around 19°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. Castle Rock's winter sits around 19°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Reliably warm. Castle Rock's summer averages around 87°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 7, give or take a half-zone. Castle Rock's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 6,309 feet (1,923 m) — high enough to matter physiologically. Plan on a week or two of feeling the altitude before your body recalibrates, drink more water than you think you need, and respect the sun.
The headline number is reassuring. Castle Rock's reported incident rate of about 1,214 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. Castle Rock's composite index is 119 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.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 64/100, Castle Rock has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $83,349 to live in Castle Rock 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 Castle Rock runs about $1,810/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.