Job Offer Comparison Calculator
Compare two job offers in different cities after tax and cost of living. Find out which offer is genuinely worth more.
Salary vs Cost of Living Calculator — Free USA Tool [2026]
Enter what you earn now and pick two American cities. This calculator works out the salary you would need in the second city to keep the exact same standard of living, using 2026 federal and state tax rules and cost data for 78 cities across 39 states.
- 🏙️ 78 US cities
- 🧾 2026 tax year
- ⚡ Instant result
- ✅ No signup
How to Use This Calculator
There are four things the calculator needs, and you can be finished in about twenty seconds.
Start with your salary. Type the gross figure — what the offer letter says, before anything comes out. If you think in monthly terms, hit the Monthly toggle inside the salary box and enter it that way instead. The two stay in sync, so switching back and forth will not change the underlying number.
Pick the city you live in now, then the one you are considering. Both pickers search as you type, so "char" finds Charlotte and "sf" finds San Francisco. If your exact town is not listed, choose the nearest major metro — costs track the metro far more closely than they track the city limit.
Set your household. Adults and children, then your tax filing status. This matters more than people expect. The same $90,000 produces a very different picture for a single filer in a studio than for a married couple with a toddler, because both the tax and the expense side move.
Hit Calculate. If you want to go deeper, open the Fine-tune panel first. That is where you set lifestyle level, whether you rent or buy, your children's ages, and which expense categories to count at all. If your employer pays your health insurance in full, switch healthcare off. If you have no car and no intention of getting one, switch transport off. The estimate gets sharper every time you tell it something true.
How to Read Your Results
The large figure at the top is the one most people came for: the salary you would need in the second city to live the way you live now. If you earn $75,000 in Austin, the equivalent in San Francisco is $88,379. That is because the BEA puts San Francisco's overall price level at 115.6 against Austin's 98.1 (US = 100). Rent is the biggest gap: HUD's one-bedroom Fair Market Rent is $2,977 in San Francisco and $1,562 in Austin, so always check the disposable income line too.
Underneath that sits the part that actually settles arguments — a line-by-line table of both cities side by side. Gross salary, then federal tax, state and city tax, and payroll tax coming off the top. Then housing, groceries, transport, healthcare, utilities and childcare coming off what is left. The bottom row is disposable income: the money still there at the end of the month once everything predictable has been paid.
The Diff column reads in your favor. A positive number means the second city leaves you better off on that line. A negative number means it costs you. So a +$1,115 a month on gross salary and a −$1,415 on housing tells you the rent ate more than the whole raise.
The two score bars underneath rate each city out of 100 on what share of your take-home pay survives the month. Above 80 is genuinely comfortable. Between 40 and 60 means you are fine but not building much. Below 25 means the city is squeezing you, and the number is worth taking seriously before you sign a lease.
Then there are the Key Insights. These pick out whichever two or three things actually moved your result — usually the state tax gap, the housing gap, or childcare if you have young children. If your salary does not cover basic costs in the destination, this is where you will be told, along with the minimum salary that would.
What This Calculator Includes
On the income side: 2026 federal income tax brackets applied after the standard deduction for your filing status, Social Security at 6.2% up to the $184,500 wage base, Medicare at 1.45% with the 0.9% surtax above the threshold, state income tax using each state's real bracket structure, and local income tax in the cities that charge it.
That last one catches people out. 78 cities are covered here and sixteen of them levy their own income or wage tax on top of the state's — New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, St. Louis, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Louisville, Birmingham, Denver and Portland. Six states in the list charge no income tax on wages at all: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington and Alaska.
On the expense side: housing sized to your household, groceries scaled by the number and ages of the people eating them, transport, healthcare, utilities, childcare priced by each child's age, and optionally dining out and entertainment. Housing is the HUD FY2026 Fair Market Rent for the city. The other lines are scaled by the BEA's 2024 price levels for goods, utilities and other services in that metro, rather than by one flat multiplier, because housing varies enormously between metros while a gallon of milk does not.
What it deliberately leaves out
Student loans, credit card balances, car payments, alimony and savings targets are not included. Those are your commitments, not the city's cost, and folding them in would make one city look cheaper than another for reasons that have nothing to do with where you live. Subtract them from the disposable figure yourself.
It also does not model equity vesting, bonuses, 401(k) matching, itemized deductions, or credits like the Child Tax Credit. If a large part of your compensation is equity, treat the cash figure here as the floor and value the rest separately — and discount it for the risk that it never vests.
Data Sources & Methodology
The tax side comes from published rules. Federal brackets and the standard deduction follow IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 for tax year 2026. The Social Security wage base and Medicare rates come from the Social Security Administration's annual announcement. State brackets reflect each state's enacted rates for 2026, and the local income tax rates come from the individual city and county revenue authorities.
The cost side uses two government data sets. Rent is the HUD FY2026 Fair Market Rent for each city's metro or county. Prices for everything else, and the overall price level used for the equivalent salary, come from the BEA's 2024 Regional Price Parities (released February 2026), where 100 is the US average. These are comparative measures. They tell you that Denver at 105.8 costs about 6% more than the US average. They do not tell you what any specific apartment rents for.
Overall price levels in our cities run from 89.2 in Tulsa to 115.6 in San Francisco and Oakland. Rent varies much more than that, and rent is most of the gap. On a $100,000 salary for a single filer, this calculator puts monthly disposable income at about $4,476 in El Paso and about $1,837 in San Francisco.
How accurate is it, honestly
The tax math is the solid half. Brackets and thresholds are published rules and we apply them directly, so if your situation is a straightforward W-2 the take-home figure should land close to your actual paycheck.
The expense side is a model of a typical household, and your household is not typical — nobody's is. It does not know about your rent-controlled apartment, your paid-off car, your 90-minute commute, or the fact that your employer covers your family's health premiums. Any of those can move the answer by thousands of dollars a year. That is precisely what the Fine-tune panel is for: switch off what does not apply to you and the estimate gets closer to your life.
Use the output the way you would use a good second opinion. It is enough to tell you whether an offer is serious, whether a move is affordable, and what number to put in front of a recruiter. It is not a substitute for building a real budget once you have a real address.
A worked example
Suppose you are on $150,000 in New York City and you have an offer for $120,000 in Austin. The headline looks like a $30,000 pay cut, and most people stop there.
| Line | New York City | Austin |
|---|---|---|
| Gross salary | $150,000/yr | $120,000/yr |
| Total tax | $49,879/yr | $26,750/yr |
| Net take-home | $100,121/yr | $93,250/yr |
| Living costs | $3,975 | $2,670 |
| Left each month | $4,369 | $5,100 |
The smaller offer wins by about $731 a month, or close to $8,800 a year. New York takes $23,129 more in tax — state and city income tax on top of federal — and then charges $1,305 more a month to live there. The $30,000 pay cut is not a pay cut at all once you look at what reaches your account.
This runs the other way too, and that is the part worth checking before you move somewhere cheap. Run your own numbers above rather than trusting the direction of the arrow.
Want a worked answer for one city? See what $75,000 leaves in Chicago after tax and rent, or the same salary in Phoenix.
Who This Salary vs Cost of Living Calculator Is For
Use this salary vs cost of living calculator whenever a number has a city attached to it: a job offer in another metro, a transfer, a raise that comes with a move, or simply the question of whether you are paid fairly for where you live. It answers one question well, namely what salary in city B buys the same life you have in city A, after tax and after the costs that actually move between cities.
It is less useful for decisions that are not about place. If you are comparing two offers in the same city, the cost side cancels out and only tax and pay matter. If you are budgeting month to month, the disposable income calculator shows what is left after living costs in a single city. For a written answer on one salary in one city, see our city salary guides.
Where the numbers come from
Price levels between places are anchored to the Regional Price Parities from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which measures how much more or less the same basket of goods and services costs in each state and metro than the national average. Taxes follow the IRS federal income tax brackets for 2026 plus each state's own schedule. If you want the longer explanation of what goes into a cost of living figure and why the national average misleads, read what cost of living is and how it is measured. For the strategy of earning a big-city salary while living somewhere cheaper, see what geographic salary arbitrage is.
Three checks before you trust the result
- Use your real rent. Housing is the line with the widest spread between cities, so a typical figure can be off by hundreds a month for your neighbourhood.
- Compare take-home, not gross. A no-income-tax state can beat a cheaper city with a state income tax, which is why the tool shows both sides line by line.
- Treat it as a floor for negotiation. The equivalent salary is the minimum that keeps you level, not the number to ask for.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
It converts a salary from one city into the salary you would need in another city to live the same way. A $90,000 job in Dallas and a $90,000 job in San Francisco are not the same offer, because rent, groceries, transport and state income tax all differ. This tool prices that difference instead of leaving you to guess at it.
We start with your gross pay and subtract 2026 federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and any state and city income tax that applies. That gives your real take-home pay. Housing comes from HUD FY2026 Fair Market Rents, and groceries, transport, healthcare, utilities and childcare are scaled by BEA 2024 price levels for each metro. The equivalent salary scales your pay by the ratio of the two cities' BEA price levels (Regional Price Parities). The side-by-side table then shows what is actually left each month in both cities.
The calculator covers 78 US cities across 39 states and the District of Columbia. That includes every major metro plus a spread of mid-size cities, because those are usually the interesting comparison. Overall price levels (BEA 2024 Regional Price Parities) run from 89.2 in Tulsa to 115.6 in San Francisco and Oakland, where 100 is the national average. Rents vary far more.
Yes, and it matters more than most people expect. We model the actual bracket structure for each state rather than a flat average, plus local income or wage tax in the cities that levy it — New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, St. Louis, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Louisville, Birmingham, Denver and Portland. Six states in our list have no income tax at all: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington and Alaska.
Treat the output as a well-informed estimate, not a quote. The tax math is precise, but the expense side is modeled from typical household spending at your chosen household size and lifestyle level. If you have rent control, a paid-off car, an unusually long commute or employer-paid health insurance, your real numbers will move. Use the Fine-tune panel to switch individual expense categories on and off.
Yes. There is no signup, no email wall and no paid tier. The site is funded by advertising, which is why the tools stay open to everyone.
Transparency
How We Calculate These Numbers
No black box — here is exactly what happens to your salary
1. Federal tax
Your gross pay runs through the 2026 federal income tax brackets for your filing status, after the standard deduction. We use the bracket structure rather than an effective-rate shortcut, because the shortcut quietly overstates tax on lower incomes and understates it on higher ones.
2. Payroll tax
Social Security at 6.2% up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500, then Medicare at 1.45% on everything, plus the 0.9% Additional Medicare surtax above $200,000 for a single filer. These come out before anything else, which is why take-home never scales linearly with a raise.
3. State and local tax
Each state is modeled with its own bracket structure — flat where the state is flat, graduated where it is graduated. Sixteen cities also levy their own income or wage tax, including New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Denver and Portland. Six states in our data charge no income tax on wages at all: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington and Alaska.
4. Cost of living
Rent is the HUD FY2026 Fair Market Rent for each city. Other costs are scaled by the BEA's 2024 Regional Price Parities for that metro (100 = US average), using BEA's separate goods, utilities and services indexes. Across 78 cities, overall prices run from 89.2 in Tulsa to 115.6 in San Francisco, and rent varies far more than that. See the full methodology.
5. Your household
Costs scale with the number of adults and children you tell us about. Childcare is priced by each child's age — roughly $1,400 a month under two, $1,100 from two to five, $550 for school age, and nothing from thirteen — because a flat per-child figure is wrong for almost everybody.
6. What is left
Take-home pay minus modeled expenses is your disposable income. The equivalent salary is simply the gross figure that leaves you the same amount left over in the other city. That is the number worth negotiating on.
Where this is strong, and where it is not
The tax side is the reliable half. Brackets, thresholds and wage bases are published rules, and we apply them directly. If your W-2 situation is straightforward, the take-home figure should land close.
The cost side is a model, not a quote. It describes a typical household at the size and lifestyle level you select, using a comparative regional price index. It does not know that you have a rent-controlled apartment, a paid-off car, an unusually brutal commute, or an employer covering your health premiums in full. Those are real and they can move the answer by thousands. The Fine-tune panel exists so you can switch individual expense categories off and rebuild the estimate around what is actually true for you.
We also do not model equity vesting schedules, bonuses, 401(k) matching, itemized deductions or credits such as the Child Tax Credit. Those are worth factoring in separately before you sign anything.
Tax data reflects the 2026 tax year. Cost indices last reviewed October 2026. These tools are published for general information and are not financial, tax or legal advice.