Compare any two states

Everything on this site traces back to a named, public, government source — not a paid or proprietary index. Take-home pay uses real IRS federal tax brackets, Tax Foundation state tax data, and SSA FICA rates. Cost-of-living figures come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities. Migration data is straight from the U.S. Census Bureau and IRS Statistics of Income. Climate and natural hazard data comes from NOAA and FEMA. If you want the full breakdown, our Methodology page lists every source by name.

Both, together — which is rarer than it sounds. A lot of cost-of-living tools compare prices between two places but leave taxes out of the picture entirely, or vice versa. We calculate your real take-home pay after federal and state taxes first, then adjust that number for what it actually buys in each state. That combination is the whole point of this site — a salary number and a cost-of-living number, on their own, don’t tell you what you actually keep and what it’s worth.

Not exactly, and it’s worth knowing why. The U.S. government doesn’t publish one official cost-of-living index — every calculator you’ll find online is built on some organization’s own methodology for estimating it. Most of the big financial sites license a private index from a company called C2ER. We made a different call: we use the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities instead, because it’s free, public, and the methodology is fully documented by a federal agency, not something we — or anyone — pays for access to.

Right now: housing, everyday goods, utilities, and services, each measured against the national average using real BEA pricing data. We’re upfront that this doesn’t yet break out specific categories like groceries, gas, or insurance individually — that’s a real gap, and it’s on our roadmap, not something we’re pretending isn’t missing.

It’s the salary you’d need in the other state to maintain the exact same standard of living you have now — not a raise, not a pay cut, just the same real purchasing power translated to a different price level. We calculate it using the same BEA Regional Price Parities mentioned above, comparing the overall price level between your two selected states.

Your own numbers, always. A lot of relocation guides walk you through one hypothetical example (someone making $60,000 moving from City A to City B) and leave you to do your own math for your actual situation. Ours doesn’t — enter your real salary and the two states you’re actually deciding between, and every number you see is computed specifically for that comparison, not a stand-in example.

Yes. Our Climate comparison tool uses NOAA’s 30-year climate normals (average highs, lows, precipitation, extreme-temperature days) and FEMA’s National Risk Index (flood, wildfire, hurricane, tornado, and earthquake risk) for any two states you’re comparing.

This is genuinely coming, not just a placeholder promise. We’re building it using free federal education data — NAEP performance results and NCES school and district statistics — rather than a paid ranking or a black-box score. We’d rather launch it later and get the sourcing right than rush out something we can’t fully stand behind.

No. Everything here is for informational purposes — a way to see real numbers side by side before you make your own decision, not a substitute for a licensed financial advisor or tax professional. Tax figures are estimates based on publicly available brackets and may not reflect your exact liability.