Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Los Angeles's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Los Angeles?
Your $100,000 in Los Angeles has the same purchasing power as $73,687 in the average US city. You'd need $26,313 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 Los Angeles's cost index of 136, sorted by closest match.
Los Angeles has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Solidly above-average earnings and walkable in a way most us cities aren't are the headliners, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The typical household in Los Angeles pulls in $76,244 — 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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 78/100, Los Angeles sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand. Transit Score comes in at 60/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Bike Score of 77/100 in Los Angeles. 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.
Reasons are pulled from Los Angeles'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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Los Angeles 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 95 feet (29 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Los Angeles's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Los Angeles comes in around 3,592 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. Los Angeles's index of 136 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 36% 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.
Los Angeles scores 78/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 60 out of 100. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $94,997 to live in Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles runs about $1,791/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.