Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Pocatello's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Pocatello?
Your $100,000 in Pocatello has the same purchasing power as $120,963 in the average US city. You'd need $20,963 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 Pocatello's cost index of 83, sorted by closest match.
Pocatello 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 crime statistics come out reassuring are the headliners, plus 4 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 83, a comfortable 17% 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 $790/mo against a typical household income of $56,115, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
The reported crime rate in Pocatello runs about 1,780 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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 67/100, Pocatello 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 61/100 in Pocatello. 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 Pocatello comes in around 33, 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 Pocatello runs around 16 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 Pocatello'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.
Pocatello gets a handful of meaningful snow days each year. Winters average about 26°F — cold enough for several inches at a time, warm enough for everything to melt between storms.
A real winter, but not a punishing one. Pocatello 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".
Reliably warm. Pocatello's summer averages around 90°F, the kind of heat where you remember to leave the house before noon for outdoor things and accept that the back of your shirt will be wet by lunchtime.
Pocatello falls in roughly USDA Zone 8. 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 4,469 feet (1,362 m) above sea level. At that altitude, the first few days for a coastal visitor can feel mildly off — shorter breath on stairs, faster fatigue — but it normalizes quickly.
The headline number is reassuring. Pocatello's reported incident rate of about 1,780 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.
Pocatello is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 83 versus the 100 national baseline — about 17% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 67/100, Pocatello has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. If walkability matters to you, the neighborhood choice will matter more than the city-level number.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $57,869 to live in Pocatello 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 Pocatello runs about $790/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.