Cost of living by metro area

The U.S. has 387 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) as defined by the Office of Management and Budget. An MSA is a county or group of counties tied together by commuting patterns and centered on at least one urban area of 50,000 or more residents. Smaller commuter regions are called Micropolitan Statistical Areas and are not listed here.

Based on the population-weighted average across constituent counties, the cheapest U.S. metro is the Brownsville-Harlingen metro area at approximately $2,476 per month for a single person.

The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area has the highest average cost of living among major U.S. metros, at approximately $5,769 per month for a single person.

By population, the largest U.S. metro area is the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area, with approximately 19,756,722 residents across 22 counties.