Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Santa Fe's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Santa Fe?
Your $100,000 in Santa Fe has the same purchasing power as $99,315 in the average US city. You'd need $685 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 Fe's cost index of 101, sorted by closest match.
Santa Fe has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Walkable in a way most US cities aren't and bike infrastructure that actually exists are the headliners, plus 3 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
With a citywide Walk Score of 73/100, Santa Fe 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 60/100 in Santa Fe. 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 Santa Fe comes in around 16, 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 Santa Fe runs around 20 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.
Santa Fe has a college-educated share of about 44% 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 Santa Fe'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.
Santa Fe gets a handful of meaningful snow days each year. Winters average about 28°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. Santa Fe averages roughly 28°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".
Properly hot. Santa Fe's summer averages around 90°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 Fe 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 6,762 feet (2,061 m) — high enough to matter physiologically. Plan on a week or two of feeling the altitude before your body recalibrates, drink more water than you think you need, and respect the sun.
Worse than the national norm, but it depends where. Santa Fe's ~5,858 per 100,000 reflects a citywide aggregate. Some neighborhoods here are notably safer than the average; others are notably worse. Worth looking at the specific area, not the city-level number.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Santa Fe's index of 101 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Santa Fe scores 73/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $70,483 to live in Santa Fe 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 Fe runs about $1,314/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.