Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Kent's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Kent?
Your $100,000 in Kent has the same purchasing power as $80,919 in the average US city. You'd need $19,081 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 Kent's cost index of 124, sorted by closest match.
Kent has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Washington doesn't tax your paycheck and solidly above-average earnings are the headliners. The rest is below.
Living in Kent means no state income tax on your salary — Washington is one of nine states that simply doesn't have one. On a $100k income that's typically thousands of dollars a year that stay in your account instead of going to a state revenue department. (Washington taxes some long-term capital gains over a high threshold, but ordinary wages and salaries are not taxed.)
The typical household in Kent pulls in $86,966 — comfortably above the US median. Combined with the cost of living here, the income-to-expense ratio works out better than a quick look at either number in isolation would suggest.
Reasons are pulled from Kent'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 38°F, Kent 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 Kent sit around 38°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Kent sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Kent falls in roughly USDA Zone 9. 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 410 feet (125 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Kent's altitude shows up in daily life.
Kent's reported crime rate runs high: about 6,020 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.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Kent's composite index is 124 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.
Kent scores 49 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 41 out of 100. Some neighborhoods buck the citywide average; the dense inner cores are usually noticeably more walkable than the city number suggests.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $86,506 to live in Kent 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 Kent runs about $1,742/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.