City-to-City Relocation Comparisons
Compare Take-Home Pay, Housing Costs & Taxes Across Flagship US Moves
See how cost of living, take-home pay, housing costs, and monthly affordability change when you relocate from one city to another. Start with the moves people ask about most; each comparison shows take-home pay, rent, taxes and where households are actually moving.
Use these pages to compare common relocation paths, understand what usually changes most in a move, and pressure-test whether a destination may actually improve your budget.
Compare any two cities
Pick where you live now and where you are thinking of moving. The 16 moves below have their own pages; any other pair opens the calculator with both cities filled in.
Opens the full comparison page for this move.
The 16 flagship moves at $100,000 a year
One single filer on the same salary in both cities, after federal, state and local income tax and typical rent. Sorted by how much more or less is left after rent each month.
| Move | Take-home change | Typical rent change | Left after rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York City to Dallas | +$729 a month | -$871 a month | +$1,600 a month |
| Boston to Dallas | +$437 a month | -$1,122 a month | +$1,559 a month |
| New York City to Austin | +$729 a month | -$684 a month | +$1,413 a month |
| Boston to Austin | +$437 a month | -$935 a month | +$1,372 a month |
| Los Angeles to Dallas | +$530 a month | -$668 a month | +$1,198 a month |
| New York City to Charlotte | +$439 a month | -$748 a month | +$1,187 a month |
| Boston to Charlotte | +$147 a month | -$999 a month | +$1,146 a month |
| Los Angeles to Austin | +$530 a month | -$481 a month | +$1,011 a month |
| New York City to Miami | +$729 a month | -$144 a month | +$873 a month |
| Boston to Miami | +$437 a month | -$395 a month | +$832 a month |
| Los Angeles to Charlotte | +$239 a month | -$545 a month | +$784 a month |
| Seattle to Dallas | +$116 a month | -$518 a month | +$634 a month |
| Los Angeles to Miami | +$530 a month | +$59 a month | +$471 a month |
| Seattle to Austin | +$116 a month | -$331 a month | +$447 a month |
| Seattle to Charlotte | -$175 a month | -$395 a month | +$220 a month |
| Seattle to Miami | +$116 a month | +$209 a month | -$93 a month |
Computed with the site's 2026 tax engine (standard deduction, no 401(k) contribution). Rents are the U.S. Census Bureau's medians for each city (American Community Survey). Planning estimates, not tax advice. Your own salary and housing change these numbers, so open a move and enter yours.
Start from where you live
Each origin page shows the same salary in popular destinations side by side.
What these city comparison pages are built to show
These comparison pages are designed to help you look past headline salary and focus on what a move may actually do to your budget. Instead of comparing cities only by broad cost-of-living rankings, the pages estimate how taxes, housing, and monthly flexibility may change across a specific route.
That matters because the same move can look very different depending on your income, filing status, and housing assumptions. A city with lower taxes is not automatically the better choice if rent, home prices, insurance, or other core costs rise enough to offset the benefit.
Compare take-home pay
Look beyond gross salary and see how state income taxes and deductions may affect your real monthly income in each city.
Compare housing pressure
Rent, mortgage, property tax, and insurance often change the affordability picture more than people expect when moving between cities.
Estimate comparable salary
Each comparison page helps estimate what salary may feel equivalent after a move once taxes and housing costs are considered together.
Common relocation patterns people compare most
The strongest city-to-city searches usually follow a few predictable patterns. Understanding those patterns helps you read comparison pages more intelligently instead of focusing on one number in isolation.
High-cost city to lower-cost city
Many of the strongest relocation comparisons involve moving from expensive coastal metros to lower-cost cities where housing pressure may fall. The real benefit often comes from monthly affordability, not just headline salary.
High-tax state to lower-tax state
Moves to places like Texas or Florida are often framed as tax wins, but taxes alone do not decide the result. Housing, insurance, and transportation can offset part of the gain.
Renters vs future home buyers
The same move can look very different depending on whether you plan to rent or buy. Home prices, property tax, insurance, and mortgage costs can change the affordability picture fast.
Example relocation tradeoffs
These quick examples show why a move should be evaluated as a full budget decision, not just a tax decision or a salary decision.
NYC to Charlotte
This route often improves affordability mostly because housing costs are lower. For many households, that matters more than salary optics alone.
Los Angeles to Austin
People often treat this as a simple tax move, but the better question is whether the monthly budget actually improves once housing assumptions are included.
Boston to Miami
State tax differences can help, but the outcome still depends on what happens to housing, insurance, and your overall monthly spending pattern.
What changes most when you move to a new city?
State income taxes
Moving from a high-tax state to a lower-tax state can improve take-home pay, but it does not automatically create a better overall budget.
Rent and home prices
Housing is usually the biggest monthly expense and often the biggest reason a move either helps or hurts affordability.
Transportation costs
Car dependence, parking, commute patterns, and transit access can change the real monthly cost of living more than people expect.
Monthly flexibility
The most important question is usually simple: how much is left after essential costs each month, and does the move improve that number?
Frequently asked questions about city cost of living comparisons
- How do you compare cost of living between two cities?
- Each comparison page uses your gross salary, filing status, and state tax rules to estimate take-home pay in both cities. It then applies city-level housing and cost assumptions to show your estimated monthly budget and flexibility side by side.
- What is the equivalent salary when moving from one city to another?
- Each comparison page estimates a comparable salary, the gross income you may need in the destination city to maintain a similar monthly budget once taxes, housing costs, and core living costs are considered.
- Why can a lower-tax city still feel expensive?
- Because taxes are only one part of the move. Rent, home prices, insurance, transportation, and other recurring costs can absorb part of the tax benefit.
- Which US cities are common lower-cost alternatives to high-cost metros?
- Charlotte, Dallas, Austin, and similar cities are often compared against higher-cost metros like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle because the housing and tax mix can create meaningful affordability differences.
- Are these pages meant to replace exact personal budgeting?
- No. These pages are planning tools. They are most useful for comparing the direction and scale of a move before you plug in your own exact housing, salary, and household details.
Keep exploring relocation tools
Compare cities, then go deeper with the main relocation calculator and other relocation planning tools.
Sources and limits
Tax figures come from IRS and state government publications (2026 rules, checked October 13, 2026). Written and maintained by Relocation By Numbers. Sources and limits reviewed October 13, 2026. Found a mistake? Tell us in the feedback box below. Full methodology
Sources
- IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32: 2026 tax brackets and standard deduction
- IRS Publication 15 (2026): Social Security wage base and payroll tax rates
- IRS Instructions for Form 8959: Additional Medicare Tax thresholds
- State income tax rules: the state agency or legislature documents listed by state
- Local income taxes modeled and their sources
- Employee-paid state payroll programs included, with rates and sources
City rent, home-price and property-tax defaults come from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2020-2024 (tables B25113, B25109, B25058, B25064, B25077 and B25103). City price levels for housing, goods, utilities and other services come from BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Insurance and closing-cost defaults, and the dollar budgets for groceries, utilities, transportation, healthcare and childcare, are planning assumptions, not government data; the price-level indexes only scale them by city.
Not included
- Wages only: no self-employment, investment, capital-gain or other non-wage income.
- Standard deduction only; no itemized deductions, tax credits (dependents, education, earned income and others) or alternative minimum tax.
- Single and married-filing-jointly only; no head of household or married filing separately.
- Employers may pay some or all of a state paid-leave program's employee share; the calculators assume the largest employee share the law allows.
- Local income taxes cover a resident who works in the same city; commuter taxes and credits for tax paid to another city are not included.
- Neighborhood-level rent and home prices can differ widely from a city median.