Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Silver Spring's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Silver Spring?
Your $100,000 in Silver Spring has the same purchasing power as $81,156 in the average US city. You'd need $18,844 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 Silver Spring's cost index of 123, sorted by closest match.
Silver Spring 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 crime statistics come out reassuring are the headliners, plus 4 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The typical household in Silver Spring pulls in $95,213 — 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.
The reported crime rate in Silver Spring runs about -24 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 76/100, Silver Spring sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand. Transit Score comes in at 70/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Bike Score of 71/100 in Silver Spring. 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 Silver Spring comes in around 38, 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.
Silver Spring has a college-educated share of about 59% 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 Silver Spring'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.
Silver Spring 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. Silver Spring 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. Silver Spring'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.
Silver Spring 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 289 feet (88 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Silver Spring's altitude shows up in daily life.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Silver Spring, 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. Silver Spring's reported incident rate of about -24 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. Silver Spring's composite index is 123 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.
Silver Spring scores 76/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 70 out of 100. 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 $86,254 to live in Silver Spring 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 Silver Spring runs about $1,826/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.