The 25 cheapest places to live: U.S. Cities Edition

Updated April 3, 2023.

If it comes to finding the cheapest places to live in the US for urban dwellers, then the best places to settle are mostly south of the Mason-Dixon line. Alabama and Texas are just a few of the southern states that repeatedly make our list of the cheapest places to live among U.S. cities. But if you're thinking about moving to one of these low cost of living places, just remember to weigh the pros and cons. Low prices are attractive, but the appeal can fade if jobs are hard to find, wages are low, or there is little to do in the neighborhood. To see if one of these cheapest places to live is right for you, plan an extended visit.

It's important to note that major metro areas like New York and Los Angeles offer better job opportunities with higher pay. "But job seekers need to consider more than just their salary when determining where they should make calls," notes Tyler Baines, cost of living project manager and research analyst at the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness.

Our analysis of the cheapest places to live in the U.S. is based on the Community and Economic Research (C2ER) Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) calculations of the costs of living in 265 cities. We limited ourselves to metro areas with a population of at least 50,000. We also used data from the U.S.

Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. C2ER's Cost of Living Index measures the prices of housing, food, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous goods and services such as going to the movies or going to the beauty salon. With this data, we were able to identify the places with the lowest costs of living. And without a doubt, the difference between the most expensive and cheapest place to live in the US is striking. If you want to know about the cheapest cities to live in the US, read on.

Disclaimer: Source: 2022 C2ER Cost of Living Index, published January 2023. Index data are based on average prices of goods and services collected during the first three quarters of 2022, with weights for 2023. Data on population, household income, housing costs, poverty rates, and other metro-area-level demographics are from the U.S. Census Bureau. Metro-area unemployment rates provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are not seasonally adjusted and represent March 2023 data over January 2023 data, the most recent data available.