Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Los Banos's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Los Banos?
Your $100,000 in Los Banos has the same purchasing power as $101,750 in the average US city. You'd need $1,750 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 Los Banos's cost index of 98, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Los Banos? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly paychecks come in above the us average and lower-than-average crime numbers, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
The typical household in Los Banos pulls in $76,164 — 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.
Reported crime in Los Banos comes in around 2,781 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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 65/100, Los Banos sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Reasons are pulled from Los Banos'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 40°F, Los Banos 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 Los Banos sit around 40°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Los Banos's summer averages around 93°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 9. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 9 or colder should survive a typical winter in Los Banos. (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 118 feet (36 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Los Banos's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Los Banos comes in around 2,781 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Los Banos's index of 98 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 65/100, Los Banos has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $68,796 to live in Los Banos 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 Banos runs about $1,433/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.