Cost of Living
per year
per month
How College Station's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in College Station?
Your $100,000 in College Station has the same purchasing power as $115,513 in the average US city. You'd need $15,513 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 College Station's cost index of 87, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to College Station? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly cheaper than the national average, with no fine print and no state income tax, plus 5 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is 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 $1,129/mo against a typical household income of $52,397, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Texas 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 College Station 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.
Reported crime in College Station comes in around 2,169 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 60/100 in College Station. 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 College Station comes in around 44, 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 College Station runs around 17 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.
College Station has a college-educated share of about 58% 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 College Station'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 College Station run about 46°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 46°F mean College Station skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. College Station's summer averages around 94°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 College Station. (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 295 feet (90 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about College Station'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 College Station, 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. College Station comes in around 2,169 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
College Station 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.
College Station scores 38 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 $60,599 to live in College Station 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 College Station runs about $1,129/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.