Salary & Cost of Living Calculator
See what your current salary would be worth in a new city. Uses BEA Regional Price Parities (RPP) to adjust for cost of living differences. Metros are scored from BEA, HUD, BLS, FBI, and NCES data across all 50 states; see our methodology.
How the Calculator Works
This calculator uses Regional Price Parities (RPPs) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to adjust salaries between metros. RPPs measure the difference in price levels across regions for all goods and services, with 100 representing the national average.
A metro with an RPP of 120 is 20% more expensive than average, while an RPP of 85 means 15% cheaper. Your salary is adjusted by the ratio of destination RPP to origin RPP.
How the PlainRelocate Calculator Works
This calculator is an educational tool. It takes the inputs you provide, applies a documented formula, and shows the result along with the intermediate steps where those steps are useful for understanding. The formula is published on the methodology page so you can verify it, reproduce it on paper, or implement it yourself. We do not use the calculator to collect personal data, inputs are processed client-side or, when server-side, are not associated with any account or profile.
When the Calculator Is Reliable
The calculator is most accurate when the inputs you enter reflect your actual situation and when the formula we use matches the regulatory or industry standard you are trying to approximate. It is less reliable when your situation contains a non-standard factor, an exception, a waiver, a grandfathered term, or a jurisdiction-specific variant, that the public formula does not express. When in doubt, treat the calculator's output as an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a binding number. For legal, medical, financial, tax, or safety decisions, verify with a licensed professional.
What We Do Not Do
We do not tune calculator outputs for commercial reasons, do not shade them upward or downward to flatter a sponsor, and do not run A/B tests on the formula to improve engagement at the cost of accuracy. When we update the formula, for example, to reflect a new regulatory threshold or a new reference rate, we publish the change on the methodology page along with the effective date, so that anyone citing an earlier calculation can still find the prior formula.
Privacy and Your Inputs
By default, calculator inputs are processed in your browser and never leave the device. A small number of calculators require a server round-trip (for example, to look up a rate from a public dataset); those requests are logged only in the same aggregate fashion as any other page view. We do not build a profile from calculator usage, do not share inputs with advertisers, and do not retain inputs across sessions. If you would like your interaction logs disregarded entirely, browse privately or use a tracker-blocker, we respect both.