Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Sioux City's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Sioux City?
Your $100,000 in Sioux City has the same purchasing power as $128,123 in the average US city. You'd need $28,123 less 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 Sioux City's cost index of 78, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Sioux City, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. A genuinely affordable place to land and daily errands don't require a car lead, plus 2 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
Cost of living lands at 78 on the composite index — about 22% under the US average. That's the kind of gap that shows up in the savings rate, not just the rent check. Median rent in town runs about $904/mo against a typical household income of $64,250, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
With a citywide Walk Score of 58/100, Sioux City sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Average AQI in Sioux City comes in around 39, 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 Sioux City runs around 17 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.
Reasons are pulled from Sioux City'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.
Sioux City does winter the real way. Averages around 18°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Sioux City's winter sits around 18°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Reliably warm. Sioux City's summer averages around 83°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.
Zone 7, give or take a half-zone. Sioux City's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 1,102 feet (336 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Sioux City comes in around 3,534 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Sioux City is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 78 versus the 100 national baseline — about 22% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
In parts, yes. With a citywide Walk Score of 58/100, Sioux City has genuinely walkable neighborhoods alongside more sprawled stretches. Transit Score is 33 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 $54,635 to live in Sioux City 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 Sioux City runs about $904/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.