Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Manchester's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Manchester?
Your $100,000 in Manchester has the same purchasing power as $85,551 in the average US city. You'd need $14,449 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 Manchester's cost index of 117, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Manchester? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly no state income tax and lower-than-average crime numbers, plus 4 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
New Hampshire is one of the handful of US states with no state income tax on wages, so the only income-tax bite on a paycheck in Manchester is federal. For a household earning $100k, that's a tangible four-figure difference every year compared to a comparable salary in California or New York. (New Hampshire still taxes interest and dividends, but wage income is left alone.)
Reported crime in Manchester comes in around 2,963 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 79/100, Manchester sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Bike Score of 63/100 in Manchester. 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.
Average AQI in Manchester comes in around 28, 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 Manchester runs around 24 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.
Reasons are pulled from Manchester'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.
Yes, several times a winter. Manchester's winter average of about 26°F sits right around freezing, so storms typically drop real snow that lingers a few days before slush sets in.
A real winter, but not a punishing one. Manchester averages roughly 26°F in winter, with the coldest mornings dipping into the single digits a few times a year and most days landing somewhere between "chilly" and "actually cold".
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Manchester sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 8. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 8 or colder should survive a typical winter in Manchester. (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 262 feet (80 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Manchester's altitude shows up in daily life.
Officially, Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, but most of the action lands between mid-August and mid-October. For Manchester, that's when to keep half an eye on the National Hurricane Center forecast cone — and when an actual evacuation plan is worth having in the drawer if you're in a low-lying or coastal neighborhood.
Middle of the pack. Manchester comes in around 2,963 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Manchester's composite index is 117 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.
Manchester scores 79/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. 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 $81,823 to live in Manchester 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 Manchester runs about $1,362/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.