Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Madison's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Madison?
Your $100,000 in Madison has the same purchasing power as $113,135 in the average US city. You'd need $13,135 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 Madison's cost index of 88, sorted by closest match.
Madison has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Your dollar carries more weight here and a high-income city, even by us standards are the headliners, plus 5 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 88, a comfortable 12% under the US norm. It shows up most clearly in housing, which is where the gap to coastal metros usually opens up. Median rent in town runs about $1,201/mo against a typical household income of $118,132, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Madison's typical household earns $118,132, 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.
The unemployment rate in Madison sits at roughly 3.0%, which is a tight labor market by US standards. Salaries get nudged up faster, openings are easier to find, and switching jobs is less of a leap than it is in a softer market.
The reported crime rate in Madison runs about 903 per 100,000 residents — meaningfully below the national norm. People who care about safety as a baseline rather than a feature tend to land in cities with numbers like these.
Average AQI in Madison comes in around 42, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Average commute time in Madison runs around 20 minutes one-way — short enough that it doesn't restructure your day. Compared to the 45-plus-minute commutes that are normal in major metros, the difference adds up to a real lifestyle gap.
Madison has a college-educated share of about 64% 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 Madison'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 35°F, Madison 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 Madison sit around 35°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Madison's summer averages around 91°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.
Madison 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.
Roughly 689 feet (210 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Madison, the practical advice is: have a few days of water and supplies on hand from August onward, know your evacuation route, and don't wait for the news to tell you a storm is "probably nothing" — track the cone yourself.
The headline number is reassuring. Madison's reported incident rate of about 903 per 100,000 is comfortably below the US norm of around 3,500 per 100k. Specific neighborhoods always vary, but the broader picture is on the safer side.
Madison is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 88 versus the 100 national baseline — about 12% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Madison's Walk Score is 6/100, firmly in the car-required tier. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $61,873 to live in Madison 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 Madison runs about $1,201/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.