Cost of Living: City A vs City B Calculator
Compare actual take-home cash flow between 20 popular US city pairs — with real rent, salary, state tax, and grocery numbers. Stay, move, go remote, or split. See the math, not just averages.
Cost of living calculators almost always show the wrong number — they tell you what your salary is 'worth' in another city, when what you actually need is take-home cash flow after rent, food, gas, and state tax. We built a page per popular city pair where the answer changes most: NYC vs Austin, SF vs Seattle, LA vs Denver, and 17 more. Each page compares four real options: stay in city A, move to city B, go remote and keep city A salary in city B, or split time. Numbers come from BEA Regional Price Parities, the ACS Census, the C2ER Cost of Living Index, and Tax Foundation state tax data. Save scenarios to share with a spouse, copy a prefilled URL with your own salary plugged in, and read 900+ words of analysis specific to that pair — not a generic 'cheaper in Austin' take.
- 20 high-traffic US city pairs
- 4 options compared per pair: stay / move / remote / split
- Real rent, salary, state tax, grocery numbers
- Take-home cash flow math, not just 'cost of living index'
- Scenarios, prefill URLs, print to PDF
- Cited public-data sources