Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Huntington Beach's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Huntington Beach?
Your $100,000 in Huntington Beach has the same purchasing power as $72,606 in the average US city. You'd need $27,394 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 Huntington Beach's cost index of 138, sorted by closest match.
Huntington Beach 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 safer than the typical us city are the headliners, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Huntington Beach's typical household earns $114,747, 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.
Reported crime in Huntington Beach comes in around 2,519 per 100,000 — under the national baseline of about 3,500. Worth digging into specific neighborhoods before settling on one, but the city-level picture is on the safer side.
Bike Score of 63/100 in Huntington Beach. 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.
Huntington Beach 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 Huntington 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 Huntington Beach 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 Huntington Beach 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 Huntington Beach sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Huntington Beach 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.
Around 52 feet (16 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Huntington Beach's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Huntington Beach comes in around 2,519 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. Huntington Beach's index of 138 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 38% 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.
Huntington Beach's Walk Score is 21/100, firmly in the car-required tier. Transit Score is 30 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 $96,411 to live in Huntington 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 Huntington Beach runs about $2,318/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.