Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Madera's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Madera?
Your $100,000 in Madera has the same purchasing power as $95,831 in the average US city. You'd need $4,169 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 Madera's cost index of 104, sorted by closest match.
If you're weighing Madera, the strongest single argument is around safer than the typical us city.
Reported crime in Madera comes in around 2,117 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.
Reasons are pulled from Madera'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 41°F, Madera 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 Madera sit around 41°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Madera's summer averages around 95°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.
Madera 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 262 feet (80 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Madera's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Madera comes in around 2,117 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. Madera's index of 104 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Madera scores 36 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 26 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 $73,045 to live in Madera 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 Madera runs about $1,188/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.