See how prices compare across all 50 states plus DC, and what salary you'd need in a different state to keep the same purchasing power.
Hover a state for its full breakdown, or switch to "Required income" to click into its counties.
Uses each state's overall Regional Price Parity (BEA): the same index BEA itself uses to compute "real" (cost-of-living-adjusted) income by state. This is a purchasing-power multiplier, so it scales to any salary.
"Index" rows (overall, housing, groceries & goods, everyday services) are BEA Regional Price Parities: U.S. average = 100, not dollar amounts. The rest are real dollar/cents figures in their own units. Housing here is BEA's rent-index component; the median home price row below is a separate, real dollar figure for buyers.
Regional Price Parities are the only state-level figure here computed as an index; every other state row is a real, independently-published number in its own unit. Gas and median home prices are point-in-time snapshots (prices move); electricity, health spending, and the RPP figures are the most recent annual data each publisher has released. The county map's dollar figures are EPI's own published budgets; its color index, and the state map's "Required income" mode, are the two numbers on this page this site itself computes, both from those real dollars (see the note under the map, and the toggle above it, for exactly how). This page does not use illustrative or placeholder data anywhere.
Multiply by the ratio of the two states' price levels. The calculator does this with the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional price parities and shows how much of the difference comes from rent, goods and other services.
The price-level view compares what the same basket costs in each state. The required-income view uses the Economic Policy Institute's family budgets, the actual annual dollars a given household needs in each county, including taxes and childcare. The two can disagree, and both are real measures.
Across states, rents vary far more than the prices of goods. What cost of living actually means shows that the overall index understates the difference for anyone signing a lease.