Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Gilbert's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Gilbert?
Your $100,000 in Gilbert has the same purchasing power as $90,777 in the average US city. You'd need $9,223 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 Gilbert's cost index of 110, sorted by closest match.
Gilbert has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. A high-income city, even by US standards and the labor market runs tight are the headliners, plus 5 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Gilbert's typical household earns $115,179, 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.
The unemployment rate in Gilbert sits at roughly 3.5%, which is a tight labor market by US standards. Salaries get nudged up faster, openings are easier to find, and switching jobs is less of a leap than it is in a softer market.
The reported crime rate in Gilbert runs about 1,149 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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 55/100, Gilbert sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Bike Score of 61/100 in Gilbert. 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 Gilbert comes in around 37, 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.
Gilbert has a college-educated share of about 47% 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 Gilbert'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 Gilbert run about 47°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 47°F mean Gilbert skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Gilbert's summer averages around 105°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.
Gilbert falls in roughly USDA Zone 10. The zone classification is based on average annual minimum temperatures, so it's the right lookup for whether perennials and trees will overwinter here. Note that this is approximate from our winter-temperature data — check the USDA map for the exact zone before betting an expensive plant on it.
Roughly 1,293 feet (394 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Gilbert's reported incident rate of about 1,149 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. Gilbert's composite index is 110 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.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 55/100, Gilbert has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 28 out of 100. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $77,112 to live in Gilbert 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 Gilbert runs about $1,839/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.