Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Clearwater's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Clearwater?
Your $100,000 in Clearwater has the same purchasing power as $92,696 in the average US city. You'd need $7,304 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 Clearwater's cost index of 108, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Clearwater? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly no state income tax and you can put away the heavy coats, plus 3 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 Clearwater 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.
Winters in Clearwater average about 55°F — short, mild, and mostly just a different kind of nice weather than summer's 91°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 Clearwater comes in around 2,302 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.
Average AQI in Clearwater comes in around 38, 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 Clearwater runs around 23 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 Clearwater'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.
It's rare. Winters in Clearwater run about 55°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 55°F mean Clearwater skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Clearwater's summer averages around 91°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 10. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 10 or colder should survive a typical winter in Clearwater. (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 69 feet (21 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Clearwater'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 Clearwater, 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.
Middle of the pack. Clearwater comes in around 2,302 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Clearwater's index of 108 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Clearwater scores 36 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 21 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 $75,516 to live in Clearwater 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 Clearwater runs about $1,389/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.