Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Surprise's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Surprise?
Your $100,000 in Surprise has the same purchasing power as $90,818 in the average US city. You'd need $9,182 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 Surprise's cost index of 110, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Surprise, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. A higher-income labor market than the national norm and among the safer us cities of its size lead, plus 1 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The typical household in Surprise pulls in $87,756 — 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 Surprise runs about 1,533 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.
Average AQI in Surprise comes in around 34, 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 Surprise'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 Surprise run about 47°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 47°F mean Surprise skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Surprise's summer averages around 105°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.
Zone 10, give or take a half-zone. Surprise's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 10 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 1,352 feet (412 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Surprise's reported incident rate of about 1,533 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. Surprise's composite index is 110 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.
Surprise's Walk Score is 0/100, 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 $77,077 to live in Surprise 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 Surprise runs about $1,822/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.