Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Phoenix's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Phoenix?
Your $100,000 in Phoenix has the same purchasing power as $92,081 in the average US city. You'd need $7,919 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 Phoenix's cost index of 109, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Phoenix? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly you can walk to most of what you need and it's an easy city to live in on a bike. The detail on each one is below.
With a citywide Walk Score of 62/100, Phoenix 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 51/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Bike Score of 70/100 in Phoenix. 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.
Reasons are pulled from Phoenix'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.
It's rare. Winters in Phoenix run about 47°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 47°F mean Phoenix skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Phoenix's summer averages around 105°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 10. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 10 or colder should survive a typical winter in Phoenix. (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 1,247 feet (380 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Phoenix comes in around 3,743 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. Phoenix's index of 109 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 62/100, Phoenix has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 51 out of 100. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $76,020 to live in Phoenix 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 Phoenix runs about $1,322/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.