Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Reston's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Reston?
Your $100,000 in Reston has the same purchasing power as $80,600 in the average US city. You'd need $19,400 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 Reston's cost index of 124, sorted by closest match.
Reston has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. A high-income city, even by US standards and crime statistics come out reassuring are the headliners, plus 3 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Reston's typical household earns $135,503, which puts it in the top tier of US cities for household income. The bottom of the wage distribution isn't necessarily different from anywhere else, but the median and above sit meaningfully higher.
The reported crime rate in Reston runs about 1,655 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.
Bike Score of 64/100 in Reston. 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 Reston comes in around 39, 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.
Reston has a college-educated share of about 71% among adults 25+, which is higher than the national norm. It shows up in the local job mix, in the school district's reputation, and in the kind of conversations you have at the coffee shop.
Reasons are pulled from Reston'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.
Reston gets a handful of meaningful snow days each year. Winters average about 32°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. Reston averages roughly 32°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. Reston's summer averages around 88°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.
Reston 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.
Around 384 feet (117 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Reston's altitude shows up in daily life.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Reston, the practical advice is: have a few days of water and supplies on hand from August onward, know your evacuation route, and don't wait for the news to tell you a storm is "probably nothing" — track the cone yourself.
The headline number is reassuring. Reston's reported incident rate of about 1,655 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.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Reston's composite index is 124 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.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 54/100, Reston has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 56 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 $86,849 to live in Reston 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 Reston runs about $2,109/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.