Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Ontario's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Ontario?
Your $100,000 in Ontario has the same purchasing power as $85,193 in the average US city. You'd need $14,807 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 Ontario's cost index of 117, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Ontario? 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. The detail on each one is below.
The typical household in Ontario pulls in $78,070 — 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 Ontario comes in around 2,472 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 Ontario'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 37°F, Ontario 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 Ontario sit around 37°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Ontario's summer averages around 103°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 Ontario. (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.)
Roughly 856 feet (261 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Ontario comes in around 2,472 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. Ontario'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.
Ontario scores 26 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 20 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 $82,166 to live in Ontario 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 Ontario runs about $1,826/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.