Is Austin expensive to live in?

Moderately. Austin runs above the US average overall, and nearly all of that gap is housing. Outside of rent and home prices, everyday costs are close to the national average, and groceries are slightly cheaper. The big variables are your housing choice and, if you buy, the property tax bill.

Is $70,000 a good salary in Austin?

It works for one person and gets tight fast with anyone else. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts a single adult’s basic-needs budget in this metro at 49,322 dollars before taxes, so 70,000 leaves real room. One adult with two children needs 105,403 dollars, and 70,000 does not cover it. Buying at the 560,000-dollar city median is the part that strains.

Is $100,000 a good salary in Austin?

Comfortable for one person, workable for a couple, tight for a family of four on one income. It is roughly double the 49,322 dollars MIT’s calculator says a single adult needs, and a fifth above the 83,189 dollars for a family of four with one earner. Against the 560,000-dollar median inside the city limits, the mortgage decides the rest.

Does Austin have a state income tax?

No. Texas has no state income tax, which is set in the state constitution and is one of the main draws for movers and businesses. The trade-off is that the state leans on property tax (high) and sales tax (8.25 percent in Austin) instead.

Are property taxes high in Austin?

Yes. For tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded five rates inside the city: Austin ISD 0.9252, City of Austin 0.524017, Travis County 0.375845, Central Health 0.118023, and Austin Community College 0.1034 dollars per 100 of taxable value, a combined 2.046485, or just over two percent of a home’s taxable value. Each of those entities sets a new rate in late summer or early fall. The rate is charged on taxable value after homestead and other exemptions, not on what you paid, so the share of the purchase price you actually hand over is somewhat lower and depends on the property and your exemptions.

How much should you budget for health care in Austin?

MIT’s Austin metro budget prices health care at 3,075 dollars a year for one adult with no children and 10,182 dollars for two working adults with two children. That covers premiums on an employer plan along with out-of-pocket spending on medical services, drugs, and supplies. Your own number swings hard on whether an employer covers you and on which plan you take, so treat it as a planning figure rather than a quote.

How much does child care cost in Austin?

In MIT’s Austin metro budget, center-based child care runs 12,091 dollars a year for one child and 23,856 dollars for two, in a household where both adults work. For two children that is more than the same family spends on food and more than it spends on housing. A household with one adult at home carries no child care line at all in the model, which is most of why single-earner budgets look cheaper on paper.

Why do cost-of-living numbers for Austin disagree so much?

Because Austin names more than one place, and because rent trackers sample different inventory. The city of Austin and the five-county metro carry median sales prices far enough apart to change a decision, so a median quoted without its geography cannot be budgeted against, and the two rent trackers cited on this page differ by more than a hundred dollars for the same apartment size. Neither is wrong; they measure different things. A range with an as-of month and a named source is the truthful shape, and a single confident figure with no geography attached is the one to distrust. To check today’s numbers directly, Unlock MLS publishes a Central Texas Housing Report every month with the city and metro medians stated separately, and the Travis Central Appraisal District publishes Truth in Taxation for the rates each entity proposes and adopts.

Is Austin cheaper than other big cities?

It depends which ones. Austin is significantly cheaper than San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, but more expensive than the rest of Texas (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio) and a bit above the national average. The no-income-tax benefit and the job market are the value proposition.

Know · Austin 101

Cost of living in Austin.

Line illustration of a house with a hanging price tag

Austin is more expensive than the US average, and almost all of the gap is housing. The headline number depends entirely on where you draw the line around the city, which is the single most common way this question gets answered wrong. In August 2026 the median sales price was 560,000 dollars inside the city of Austin, 4.3 percent less than a year earlier, and 412,000 dollars across the five-county Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, 6.4 percent less, per Unlock MLS. A one-bedroom rents for somewhere between 1,260 and 1,421 dollars a month, depending on which listing tracker you read. The other headline is the Texas tax trade-off: there is no state income tax, which is a real draw, but property taxes are high. Groceries and most everyday costs run close to or a little below the national average. Here is the breakdown, including what a single person and a family of four need to earn to cover the basics, with the standing caveat that every figure below is dated to the month named beside it, and all of them move.

Carissa Spisak

Writer, The Austin Newsletter

Updated September 2026

The short version

Austin costs more than the US average overall, and the gap is almost entirely housing. Outside of rent and home prices, day-to-day costs (groceries, eating out, getting around) sit close to the national average, and groceries actually run a touch cheaper. The two numbers that define the city’s affordability are the price of housing and the property tax bill that comes with owning it. If you want a single figure to hold onto, MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the before-tax income one adult with no children needs to cover the basics in the Austin metro at 49,322 dollars a year.

Buying a home

There is no single Austin median, and the gap between the two published ones is wide enough to change a decision. Unlock MLS, the local multiple listing service, put the August 2026 median sales price at 560,000 dollars inside the city of Austin, 4.3 percent less than August 2025, across 844 closed sales, and 412,000 dollars across the five-county Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, 6.4 percent less, across 2,501 sales. Travis County on its own ran 489,000 dollars, also 6.4 percent less, across 1,111 sales. All three are down from a year earlier, so the softening runs across the metro, not just the suburbs, and deeper outside the city limits. Supply tightened underneath all of them at the same time, with the city at 4.6 months of inventory against 5.7 a year earlier and the metro and Travis County both at 5.1 months, which is the combination to notice: a cheaper market is not the same as an easier one. On top of the mortgage, budget for property taxes, which are high here and add several hundred dollars a month to the real cost of ownership. Prices vary widely by area, from the central-west and Westlake premium down to the more affordable suburbs. Which area that is changes the number, and the neighborhood-by-neighborhood rundown gives each one a price band and a character.

Renting

Renting is the more flexible entry point, and it costs less than the buying figures suggest. The listing trackers disagree on the exact number, which is worth knowing before you anchor on one. As of mid-September 2026 Zumper put the Austin one-bedroom at about 1,260 dollars a month and the two-bedroom at about 1,600, while RentCafe’s figures for the end of August were 1,421 and 1,812, against an average of 1,641 across all unit sizes. Call it roughly 1,260 to 1,421 dollars for a one-bedroom and 1,600 to 1,812 for a two-bedroom. The spread by neighborhood is far larger than the spread between sources: central and East Side addresses command a premium, while the northern and far-south suburbs run meaningfully cheaper. Where you live drives the number more than almost anything else, which is what our neighborhoods guide is for.

What you need to earn

The closest thing to a straight answer comes from MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which prices a basic-needs budget for the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro by household size and publishes every line item that goes into it. One adult with no children needs 49,322 dollars a year before taxes, which nets out to about 3,506 dollars a month to spend. Two working adults with two children need 112,866 dollars between them, about 8,398 dollars a month after tax. The same family on one income needs 83,189 dollars, and the reason that number is so much lower is that the model assumes the adult at home does the child care. Read these as a floor rather than a comfortable salary: the calculator deliberately budgets nothing for restaurant meals, vacations, or savings and retirement, and its housing line is rent at the federal fair-market level rather than a mortgage on a 560,000-dollar house. The figures were last updated in February 2026.

Health care, child care, and the rest of the budget

These are the line items that break a budget built on rent alone. In the same MIT budget, health care runs 3,075 dollars a year for one adult with no children and 10,182 dollars for two working adults with two children, counting employer-plan premiums along with out-of-pocket spending on medical services, drugs, and supplies. Child care is the harder number: 12,091 dollars a year for one child and 23,856 for two in a household where both adults work, which is more than that family spends on food and more than it spends on housing. That line is also what moves the wage a household has to earn. The calculator’s hourly living wage for this metro is 23.71 dollars for one adult with no children and 50.67 dollars for one adult with two, and child care alone accounts for 11.47 dollars an hour of that gap, on the 2,080-hour year the model assumes. Two working adults with two children need 27.13 dollars an hour each, against 15.74 with no children. The model also carries a civic engagement line, 2,583 dollars a year for a single adult, covering the things a life is actually made of, including admissions and fees, reading, education, hobbies, and pets. Transportation is the second-biggest line after housing for a single adult, at 9,016 dollars a year, which is the price of a car-dependent city stated plainly.

The monthly budget, line by line

Same MIT budget, divided by twelve, because a month is the shape most people plan in. The lines are rounded to the dollar, so they add to within a dollar or two of the total. One adult with no children, 3,506 dollars a month after tax: housing 1,482, transportation 751, other necessities 339, food 337, health care 256, civic engagement 215, internet and mobile 126. Two working adults with two children, 8,398 dollars a month after tax: child care 1,988, housing 1,862, transportation 1,260, food 987, health care 849, other necessities 733, civic engagement 546, internet and mobile 174. Two notes on those columns. Housing and child care together are 3,850 dollars of the family’s 8,398, so the other six lines share what is left. And the housing line is rent at the federal fair-market level rather than a mortgage on a 560,000-dollar house, so an owner’s version of this budget starts higher than either column shows.

The tax trade-off: no income tax, high property tax

This is the part newcomers most need to understand. Texas has no state income tax, written into the state constitution, which is genuinely valuable, especially on a high salary. But the state makes it up elsewhere: property taxes are among the highest in the country, and sales tax runs 8.25 percent. The property tax bill is the sum of separate rates set by the school district, the city, the county, the health district, and the community college, and each of them adopts a new rate in late summer or early fall. For tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded Austin ISD at 0.9252 dollars per 100 of taxable value, the City of Austin at 0.524017, Travis County at 0.375845, Central Health at 0.118023, and Austin Community College at 0.1034, which sum to 2.046485, or just over two percent. It is charged on taxable value after homestead and other exemptions rather than on the purchase price, which matters more than it sounds: a homesteaded owner pays that rate on a smaller number than the one on the closing statement. For homeowners, the property tax bill offsets a chunk of the income-tax savings; for high earners who rent, the no-income-tax math is more clearly a win.

Groceries, utilities, and getting around

Everyday costs are close to average, with a few Austin-specific notes. MIT’s metro budget puts one adult’s food at 4,047 dollars a year, a little over 337 dollars a month, on the USDA plan that assumes every meal is cooked at home, so anything you eat out sits on top of it. Utilities are reasonable most of the year, but summer air-conditioning pushes electric bills up from roughly June through September. Austin is car-dependent outside the central core, so factor in a car, gas, and parking unless you land somewhere genuinely walkable.

Salaries and the tech factor

The cost-of-living math depends heavily on what you earn, and the spread between industries here is wide enough to be the whole answer. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage data MIT publishes beside that budget, computer and mathematical occupations run a typical 116,820 dollars, health care practitioners 98,150, office and administrative support 50,770, and food preparation and serving 34,170. Set those against the 49,322-dollar basic-needs bar for a single adult and you have the city’s affordability story in four numbers. Austin’s tech sector pushed both wages and housing prices up, so the numbers work much more comfortably on a software salary than on a service-industry one. The flip side of the growth that made Austin expensive is a strong job market, which is the trade a lot of newcomers are making.

How it compares

Austin is a clear bargain next to the coastal tech hubs: noticeably cheaper than San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles. It is more expensive than the rest of Texas, including Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, and a bit above the national average. The pitch is the combination: big-city jobs and culture, no state income tax, and a lower cost than the coasts, in exchange for high property taxes and summers that earn the air conditioning. The fuller version of that trade, heat and traffic included, is the honest case for and against living here.

How to check these numbers yourself

Every figure on this page is a dated snapshot, and the honest thing to say about Austin cost-of-living numbers is that careful sources disagree with each other. That is not sloppiness on their part. It is what happens when several different things get called by one word. The word doing the most damage is Austin. The city and the five-county Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro carry medians far enough apart to change whether a given house is affordable, so a median quoted without its geography is not a number anyone can budget against. The first question to ask of any figure is which Austin it describes. The second is which month, because these move. Rent has a narrower version of the same problem. The two listing trackers cited on this page disagree by more than a hundred dollars for the same apartment size, because they sample different inventory rather than because one of them is wrong. A range with an as-of month is the truthful shape, and a single confident number should invite suspicion. There is one number you will see quoted that this page does not print: the cost-of-living index score, the one pinned to a national average of 100. Those trace back to a commercial index that is sold rather than published, so there is no way to open it and see which prices went into it, and the federal consumer price index, which is free, covers Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston but not Austin. Three sources let a reader check the current figures directly instead of through an aggregator. Unlock MLS publishes a Central Texas Housing Report every month, with the city and metro medians reported separately, and it is the same source the housing figures here come from. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator publishes the household budgets by family size, names the federal dataset behind each line item, and prints the date its own data was last updated. For property tax, the Travis Central Appraisal District publishes Truth in Taxation, which shows the rates each taxing entity proposes and adopts, and lets a homeowner work from their own property’s taxable value after exemptions rather than from a general rate applied to a sale price.

Common questions

Is Austin expensive to live in?: Moderately. Austin runs above the US average overall, and nearly all of that gap is housing. Outside of rent and home prices, everyday costs are close to the national average, and groceries are slightly cheaper. The big variables are your housing choice and, if you buy, the property tax bill.
What is the average rent and home price in Austin?: RentCafe put an Austin one-bedroom at 1,421 dollars a month and a two-bedroom at 1,812 at the end of August 2026, while Zumper’s mid-September figures were about 1,260 and 1,600. On the buying side, Unlock MLS put the August 2026 median sales price at 560,000 dollars inside the city of Austin and 412,000 dollars across the five-county metro, 4.3 and 6.4 percent less than a year earlier. Which figure applies to you depends on where you are looking, and all of them move.
What salary do you need to live comfortably in Austin?: MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the basics for one adult with no children in the Austin metro at 49,322 dollars a year before taxes, about 3,506 dollars a month to spend after tax. Two working adults with two children need 112,866 dollars between them, about 8,398 dollars a month after tax. Those budgets carry no restaurant meals, no vacations, and no savings, so they are the floor rather than the comfortable number. What sits above the floor is mostly housing, which depends on where in the metro you land.
Is $70,000 a good salary in Austin?: It works for one person and gets tight fast with anyone else. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts a single adult’s basic-needs budget in this metro at 49,322 dollars before taxes, so 70,000 leaves real room. One adult with two children needs 105,403 dollars, and 70,000 does not cover it. Buying at the 560,000-dollar city median is the part that strains.
Is $100,000 a good salary in Austin?: Comfortable for one person, workable for a couple, tight for a family of four on one income. It is roughly double the 49,322 dollars MIT’s calculator says a single adult needs, and a fifth above the 83,189 dollars for a family of four with one earner. Against the 560,000-dollar median inside the city limits, the mortgage decides the rest.
Does Austin have a state income tax?: No. Texas has no state income tax, which is set in the state constitution and is one of the main draws for movers and businesses. The trade-off is that the state leans on property tax (high) and sales tax (8.25 percent in Austin) instead.
Are property taxes high in Austin?: Yes. For tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded five rates inside the city: Austin ISD 0.9252, City of Austin 0.524017, Travis County 0.375845, Central Health 0.118023, and Austin Community College 0.1034 dollars per 100 of taxable value, a combined 2.046485, or just over two percent of a home’s taxable value. Each of those entities sets a new rate in late summer or early fall. The rate is charged on taxable value after homestead and other exemptions, not on what you paid, so the share of the purchase price you actually hand over is somewhat lower and depends on the property and your exemptions.
How much should you budget for health care in Austin?: MIT’s Austin metro budget prices health care at 3,075 dollars a year for one adult with no children and 10,182 dollars for two working adults with two children. That covers premiums on an employer plan along with out-of-pocket spending on medical services, drugs, and supplies. Your own number swings hard on whether an employer covers you and on which plan you take, so treat it as a planning figure rather than a quote.
How much does child care cost in Austin?: In MIT’s Austin metro budget, center-based child care runs 12,091 dollars a year for one child and 23,856 dollars for two, in a household where both adults work. For two children that is more than the same family spends on food and more than it spends on housing. A household with one adult at home carries no child care line at all in the model, which is most of why single-earner budgets look cheaper on paper.
Why do cost-of-living numbers for Austin disagree so much?: Because Austin names more than one place, and because rent trackers sample different inventory. The city of Austin and the five-county metro carry median sales prices far enough apart to change a decision, so a median quoted without its geography cannot be budgeted against, and the two rent trackers cited on this page differ by more than a hundred dollars for the same apartment size. Neither is wrong; they measure different things. A range with an as-of month and a named source is the truthful shape, and a single confident figure with no geography attached is the one to distrust. To check today’s numbers directly, Unlock MLS publishes a Central Texas Housing Report every month with the city and metro medians stated separately, and the Travis Central Appraisal District publishes Truth in Taxation for the rates each entity proposes and adopts.
Is Austin cheaper than other big cities?: It depends which ones. Austin is significantly cheaper than San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, but more expensive than the rest of Texas (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio) and a bit above the national average. The no-income-tax benefit and the job market are the value proposition.

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Carissa.