Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Fort Smith's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Fort Smith?
Your $100,000 in Fort Smith has the same purchasing power as $131,423 in the average US city. You'd need $31,423 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 Fort Smith's cost index of 76, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Fort Smith? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly your money goes a lot further here and the air is clean, not just clean-ish, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
Fort Smith's composite cost-of-living index is 76 — roughly 24% under the US baseline. Housing is doing most of the heavy lifting; groceries, utilities, and services are also cheaper than the national norm, just by smaller margins. Median rent in town runs about $798/mo against a typical household income of $50,799, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Average AQI in Fort Smith comes in around 42, 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 Fort Smith 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.
Reasons are pulled from Fort Smith'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.
Yes, several times a winter. Fort Smith's winter average of about 30°F sits right around freezing, so storms typically drop real snow that lingers a few days before slush sets in.
A real winter, but not a punishing one. Fort Smith averages roughly 30°F in winter, with the coldest mornings dipping into the single digits a few times a year and most days landing somewhere between "chilly" and "actually cold".
Properly hot. Fort Smith's summer averages around 92°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 8. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 8 or colder should survive a typical winter in Fort Smith. (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 476 feet (145 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Fort Smith's altitude shows up in daily life.
Fort Smith's reported crime rate runs high: about 6,007 per 100,000 residents, materially above the national average. Specific neighborhoods vary widely, but the city-wide aggregate is on the rougher end of the US distribution.
Fort Smith is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 76 versus the 100 national baseline — about 24% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Fort Smith's Walk Score is 13/100, 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 $53,263 to live in Fort Smith 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 Fort Smith runs about $798/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.