Cost of Living
per year
per month
How San Clemente's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in San Clemente?
Your $100,000 in San Clemente has the same purchasing power as $72,233 in the average US city. You'd need $27,767 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 San Clemente's cost index of 138, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to San Clemente? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly paychecks here run high and it's a quieter city by the numbers, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
San Clemente's typical household earns $134,730, 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 San Clemente runs about 1,667 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.
San Clemente has a college-educated share of about 50% 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 San Clemente'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, San Clemente 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 San Clemente sit around 37°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. San Clemente'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 San Clemente. (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.)
Around 243 feet (74 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about San Clemente's altitude shows up in daily life.
The headline number is reassuring. San Clemente's reported incident rate of about 1,667 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.
Significantly. San Clemente's index of 138 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 38% above the national baseline. The pattern is familiar: housing eats a large share of incomes, and people earning median-equivalent jobs from cheaper metros feel the difference fast.
San Clemente scores 31 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". 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 $96,908 to live in San Clemente 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 San Clemente runs about $2,289/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.