Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Simi Valley's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Simi Valley?
Your $100,000 in Simi Valley has the same purchasing power as $73,335 in the average US city. You'd need $26,665 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 Simi Valley's cost index of 136, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Simi Valley? 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 3 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
Simi Valley's typical household earns $112,144, 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 Simi Valley runs about 960 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 61/100, Simi Valley 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 79/100 in Simi Valley. 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 Simi Valley comes in around 42, 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.
Reasons are pulled from Simi Valley'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.
It's rare. Winters in Simi Valley run about 50°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 50°F mean Simi Valley skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Simi Valley sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 10. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 10 or colder should survive a typical winter in Simi Valley. (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.)
Roughly 883 feet (269 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Simi Valley's reported incident rate of about 960 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. Simi Valley'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 61/100, Simi Valley has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 25 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 $95,452 to live in Simi Valley 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 Simi Valley runs about $2,402/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.