Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Yakima's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Yakima?
Your $100,000 in Yakima has the same purchasing power as $112,309 in the average US city. You'd need $12,309 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 Yakima's cost index of 89, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Yakima? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly cheaper than the national average, with no fine print and no state income tax, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 89, a comfortable 11% 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 $1,014/mo against a typical household income of $55,734, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
Washington is one of the handful of US states with no state income tax on wages, so the only income-tax bite on a paycheck in Yakima is federal. For a household earning $100k, that's a tangible four-figure difference every year compared to a comparable salary in California or New York. (Washington taxes some long-term capital gains over a high threshold, but ordinary wages and salaries are not taxed.)
Average commute time in Yakima runs around 18 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 Yakima'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.
Not really a snow town. With winters averaging 38°F, Yakima sits in the mild-cold band where snowflakes appear occasionally and everything melts within a day. Most years see one storm worth talking about.
Cool, not cold. Winters in Yakima sit around 38°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Yakima 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 9. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 9 or colder should survive a typical winter in Yakima. (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 1,194 feet (364 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Yakima comes in around 3,779 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Yakima is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 89 versus the 100 national baseline — about 11% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Yakima scores 49 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 32 out of 100. Some neighborhoods buck the citywide average; the dense inner cores are usually noticeably more walkable than the city number suggests.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $62,328 to live in Yakima 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 Yakima runs about $1,014/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.