Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Compton's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Compton?
Your $100,000 in Compton has the same purchasing power as $73,986 in the average US city. You'd need $26,014 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 Compton's cost index of 135, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Compton? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly you don't actually need a car and it's an easy city to live in on a bike. The detail on each one is below.
With a Walk Score of 85/100, Compton is in the category where car ownership becomes a real choice rather than the default. Errands work on foot, the city's built dense enough that things are actually close together, and the parking-and-gas budget can quietly disappear.
Bike Score of 62/100 in Compton. 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.
Reasons are pulled from Compton'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 Compton run about 50°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 50°F mean Compton skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Compton sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
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 Compton. (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 Compton's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Compton comes in around 3,867 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Significantly. Compton's index of 135 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 35% above the national baseline. The pattern is familiar: housing eats a large share of incomes, and people earning median-equivalent jobs from cheaper metros feel the difference fast.
Compton scores 85/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $94,612 to live in Compton 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 Compton runs about $1,464/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.