Cost of Living
per year
per month
How St. Cloud's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in St. Cloud?
Your $100,000 in St. Cloud has the same purchasing power as $122,714 in the average US city. You'd need $22,714 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 St. Cloud's cost index of 81, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to St. Cloud? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly cheaper than the national average, with no fine print and the air is clean, not just clean-ish, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 81, a comfortable 19% under the US norm. It shows up most clearly in housing, which is where the gap to coastal metros usually opens up. Median rent in town runs about $944/mo against a typical household income of $58,910, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Average AQI in St. Cloud comes in around 36, 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 St. Cloud runs around 19 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 St. Cloud'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.
Snow is just part of the winter in St. Cloud. Average temperatures around 12°F mean the ground stays covered from December well into March, and a snowblower is less optional than aspirational.
Properly cold. St. Cloud's winter sits around 12°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Reliably warm. St. Cloud's summer averages around 81°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.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 6. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 6 or colder should survive a typical winter in St. Cloud. (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 1,020 feet (311 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Worse than the national norm, but it depends where. St. Cloud's ~4,775 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.
St. Cloud is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 81 versus the 100 national baseline — about 19% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
St. Cloud's Walk Score is 5/100, firmly in the car-required tier. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $57,043 to live in St. Cloud 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 St. Cloud runs about $944/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.