Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Milwaukee's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Milwaukee?
Your $100,000 in Milwaukee has the same purchasing power as $104,123 in the average US city. You'd need $4,123 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 Milwaukee's cost index of 96, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Milwaukee, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Daily errands don't require a car and the drive to work is mercifully short lead — the rest unpacked below.
With a citywide Walk Score of 72/100, Milwaukee 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 52/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Average commute time in Milwaukee runs around 22 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 Milwaukee'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.
Milwaukee does winter the real way. Averages around 20°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Milwaukee's winter sits around 20°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Milwaukee sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Zone 7, give or take a half-zone. Milwaukee's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 725 feet (221 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Worse than the national norm, but it depends where. Milwaukee's ~4,880 per 100,000 reflects a citywide aggregate. Some neighborhoods here are notably safer than the average; others are notably worse. Worth looking at the specific area, not the city-level number.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Milwaukee's index of 96 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Milwaukee scores 72/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 52 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 $67,228 to live in Milwaukee 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 Milwaukee runs about $982/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.