Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Santa Ana's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Santa Ana?
Your $100,000 in Santa Ana has the same purchasing power as $73,303 in the average US city. You'd need $26,697 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 Santa Ana's cost index of 136, sorted by closest match.
Santa Ana has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Solidly above-average earnings and safer than the typical us city are the headliners, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The typical household in Santa Ana pulls in $84,210 — 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 Santa Ana comes in around 2,125 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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 69/100, Santa Ana 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 65/100 in Santa Ana. 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 Santa Ana'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, Santa Ana 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 Santa Ana sit around 37°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Santa Ana'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.
Santa Ana falls in roughly USDA Zone 9. 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 82 feet (25 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Santa Ana's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Santa Ana comes in around 2,125 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Significantly. Santa Ana's index of 136 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 36% 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.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 69/100, Santa Ana has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 46 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 $95,494 to live in Santa Ana 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 Santa Ana runs about $1,885/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.