Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Daytona Beach's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Daytona Beach?
Your $100,000 in Daytona Beach has the same purchasing power as $99,049 in the average US city. You'd need $951 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 Daytona Beach's cost index of 101, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Daytona Beach? 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 2 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 Daytona Beach 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 Daytona Beach average about 52°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.
Average AQI in Daytona Beach 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 Daytona Beach runs around 20 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 Daytona Beach'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 Daytona Beach run about 52°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 52°F mean Daytona Beach skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Daytona Beach'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 Daytona Beach. (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 43 feet (13 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Daytona Beach'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 Daytona Beach, 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. Daytona Beach comes in around 3,604 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. Daytona Beach's index of 101 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Daytona Beach's Walk Score is 7/100, firmly in the car-required tier. Transit Score is 13 out of 100. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $70,672 to live in Daytona Beach 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 Daytona Beach runs about $1,186/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.