Cost of Living
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per month
How El Dorado Hills's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in El Dorado Hills?
Your $100,000 in El Dorado Hills has the same purchasing power as $83,070 in the average US city. You'd need $16,930 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 El Dorado Hills's cost index of 120, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to El Dorado Hills, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Above-average earnings, not just for a few people and low unemployment, plenty of openings lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
El Dorado Hills's typical household earns $156,126, 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.
At about 3.5% unemployment, El Dorado Hills's labor market is running on the tight side. Easier to land a role, easier to negotiate, easier to leave one job for a better one — the practical things that matter when you're actually looking.
The reported crime rate in El Dorado Hills runs about 994 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.
Average AQI in El Dorado Hills 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.
El Dorado Hills 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 El Dorado Hills'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.
Not really a snow town. With winters averaging 40°F, El Dorado Hills sits in the mild-cold band where snowflakes appear occasionally and everything melts within a day. Most years see one storm worth talking about.
Cool, not cold. Winters in El Dorado Hills sit around 40°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. El Dorado Hills'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.
Zone 9, give or take a half-zone. El Dorado Hills's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 9 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 1,132 feet (345 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. El Dorado Hills's reported incident rate of about 994 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. El Dorado Hills's composite index is 120 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.
El Dorado Hills's Walk Score is 17/100, firmly in the car-required tier. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $84,266 to live in El Dorado Hills 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 El Dorado Hills runs about $2,366/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.