Free tool

Cost of living salary calculator

Compare take-home pay between two states after both tax and BEA price levels (vintage 2024) -- the salary that keeps your real purchasing power the same, not just a raw cost-of-living multiplier.

Updated September 9, 2026

What the same job pays somewhere else

OriginDestination
Gross salary
Take-home pay
Price level (national = 100)

Take-home first, then prices -- not the other way around

It would be tempting to just scale the salary by the ratio of price levels and call it a day. That gives the wrong answer, because income tax is progressive: a salary scaled up first and then taxed lands in a higher bracket than the true equivalent, so it overstates what you actually need. This calculator works out your take-home pay where you are now, converts that take-home to the destination's price level, and only then solves for the destination salary that produces it -- the order that matches how a bigger paycheck is actually taxed.

What this leaves out

Price levels are Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, vintage 2024 -- the most recent BEA has published, which typically lags the calendar by about a year. It is real government data, not a crowdsourced estimate, but it is not live, and a place with fast-rising rents can already be pricier than this figure shows. Puerto Rico has a verified tax model but no BEA Regional Price Parity index at all, since BEA's state program does not cover US territories; the calculator refuses that comparison rather than guessing. This is arithmetic on the numbers you enter, not relocation or tax advice.