Cost of Living Comparison Across Our Metro Areas

How far a dollar goes, metro by metro, using the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parity index — launching with San Antonio, TX. More metros will be added as they're researched, from this same federal source.

This page is launching with San Antonio as its first entry. We're not ready to backfill our other 8 metros yet — that's a deliberate, deferred decision, not an oversight. This page is built so each metro is a normal row in the same table, so adding the rest later won't require restructuring it. Rows for metros not yet researched are shown as pending rather than left off the page entirely, so it's clear what's coming.

Regional Price Parity, by metro

We use the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parity (RPP) index rather than a crowdsourced cost-of-living site — RPP is a federal statistical measure of how overall price levels in a metro compare to the national average, where 100 = the U.S. national average across all metro and non-metro areas. A number below 100 means prices are lower than the national average; above 100 means higher.

Metro	RPP, All Items (2024)	Vs. U.S. average
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX	94.7	About 5.3% below the national average
Atlanta, GA	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Austin, TX	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Charlotte, NC	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Houston, TX	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Jacksonville, FL	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Nashville, TN	Not yet researched — coming in a future update
Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, FL	Not yet researched — coming in a future update

What RPP actually measures

RPP is a broader price-level measure — it captures how far a dollar goes across goods, services, and rents in a metro overall — rather than a fixed household budget basket the way some private cost-of-living indexes work. It's published annually by the BEA with roughly a one-year lag, so 2024 is the most recent year available as of this page's last update. San Antonio's RPP has stayed in a fairly narrow band over the last five years: 96.8 (2020), 96.2 (2021), 95.0 (2022), 94.3 (2023), 94.7 (2024).

A note on staying current, and on comparing sources

As more metros are added to this page, they'll be sourced from this same BEA RPP series so every row is measuring the same thing — we won't mix in a different index (like a private cost-of-living site) for some metros and not others, since that would make the comparison misleading rather than useful. Figures update annually when the BEA releases new data; always check the source directly for the most current release before making a financial decision.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities by State and Metro Area (series RPPALL, San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA), via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).