What it costs to live in Colorado
Price levels against the national average
Prices overall
1.38%
above average
Housing
30.53%
ranks 4 for shelter
A hundred dollars of shopping
$101
costs this here
Price rank
15
1 is the most expensive
What that actually means in Colorado
- Colorado is one of the more expensive places to buy things, ranking 15 nationally on price. Prices sit about 1.38% above the national average. The same hundred dollars of shopping costs $101. It does not sound like much written down, and then it applies to almost everything you buy, every week, for as long as you live there.
- Colorado is expensive in one specific way. Overall prices are about 1.38% above average. Housing is about 30.53% above it. Everything that is not rent — food, clothes, a coffee — sits much nearer the national norm than people expect. If you already own a home here, the state is far cheaper than its reputation.
- What does that do to a salary? Seventy-five thousand dollars, earned and spent in Colorado, goes as far as $73,978 would at average American prices. Tax is a separate subject and comes out on top of this.
- Overall prices in Colorado run about 1.38% above the national level, which places it 15 for cost of living nationally. A one-hundred-dollar national-average basket costs $101 in-state. The index covers goods, rents and services weighted to national consumption patterns, so it is a like-for-like price comparison rather than a measure of what residents actually choose to spend.
- The gap between Colorado's housing component and its all-items index is about 29.15%, with housing about 30.53% above the national level against an overall about 1.38%, ranking 4 for shelter costs. Goods parities cluster tightly nationally because tradeable items move; shelter does not, and so it carries nearly all the dispersion. The distributional consequence is that the burden falls on renters and recent buyers rather than on established owners, which an all-items comparison cannot show.
- Adjusting seventy-five thousand dollars for Colorado's all-items parity yields $73,978 in constant national purchasing power. ⚠️ The figure is pre-tax and price-only; income, sales and local taxes are additional and independent of the parity. Nominal wage levels also correlate with parities in practice, so a full comparison of two states requires the local salary for the same role alongside this adjustment.
What the money buys here
A $75,000 salary
| Take-home, actual dollars | $59,001 |
|---|---|
| Price level, all itemsUS average = 100 | 101.382 |
| HousingUS average = 100 | 130.532 |
| Cheapest place to live | 37th of 51 |
Housing is where places differ most. Everything else moves far less than people expect.
Price parities are an index where the US average is 100 — a comparison between places, not a price.
The same pay, somewhere else
A $75,000 salary
| Take-home in Colorado | $59,001 |
|---|---|
| Take-home in Texas | $61,593 |
| Once local prices are leveledBEA price parity | +$5,186 |
State income tax and state price levels only. No city income tax, and no housing market.
What is expensive here
A $75,000 salary
- Housing130.532
- Goods98.118
- Services96.241
| Housing | 130.532 |
|---|---|
| Goods | 98.118 |
| Services | 96.241 |
| All items | 101.382 |
An index where 100 is the national average. Housing moves far more than anything else.
Housing, against the country
A $75,000 salary
| Cheapest housing | MS · 55 |
|---|---|
| Dearest housing | DC · 169 |
| This state, cheapest first | 48th of 51 |
A BEA index where 100 is the national average, not a house price.
Where the ranking flips
A $75,000 salary
| Colorado on take-home | 24th |
|---|---|
| Once prices are leveled | 40th |
| Places moved | 16 |
Left is rank on take-home. Right is rank once local prices are leveled by BEA parities.
Colorado against Texas
A $75,000 salary
| Measure | Colorado | Texas |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $59,001 | $61,593 |
| Worth after local prices | $58,197 | $63,383 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.33% | 17.88% |
| State sales tax | 2.9% | 6.25% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.48% | 1.49% |
| Price level | 101.4 | 97.2 |
| Housing prices | 130.5 | 97.4 |
| Fuel tax | 22¢ | 20¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $2.24 | $1.41 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Colorado, Statewide average; Texas, Harris County (Houston). Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
| To match take-home only | $71,316 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$7,164 |
| Prices in Texas | 97 vs 101 |
State taxes and state price levels only. No city tax, and no housing market.
Where the difference actually sits
Each line compares Colorado with the national average for that kind of spending. The overall figure is the three above it, weighted the way a typical household spends — which is why housing can pull it a long way on its own.
| What you spend on | Against national average | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | 30.53% | Rent and owners’ equivalent rent |
| Goods | -1.88% | Groceries, fuel, clothing |
| Other services | -3.76% | Haircuts, repairs, childcare |
| All items | 1.38% | The three above, weighted |
What a salary is worth here
A salary of seventy-five thousand dollars, spent at Colorado prices, buys what $73,978 would buy at national average prices. That is a price adjustment only. No tax of any kind has been taken off it, and tax is a separate bill on the same money.
What this page cannot tell you
- This is one number for the whole of Colorado, and no state is one place. A big city and a rural county can sit far apart on every figure here.
- These prices were measured in 2023. Rents in particular can move a long way in a couple of years.
- And this is prices only. It says nothing about what Colorado charges you in tax, which is a separate bill and is covered elsewhere on this site.
- These parities are state-level aggregates. BEA also publishes metropolitan-area parities, and within-state dispersion between a large metro and a rural area routinely exceeds the difference between two states — so a state figure should not be read as descriptive of any particular address in Colorado.
- The underlying survey vintage is 2023, which is the most recent BEA publication rather than a current reading. Shelter parities are the component most exposed to drift between vintages, so recent local rent movements in Colorado will not be reflected here.
- Price parity and tax burden are independent quantities and this page models only the first. A low-parity state with high income tax and a high-parity state with none can leave a household in the same real position; comparing Colorado to another jurisdiction requires both figures, not either alone.
Questions people ask
Does a higher salary here actually leave me better off?
The two move together and have to be compared together. Every hundred dollars spent in Colorado does the work of $101 nationally, so a raise that matches the gap leaves you where you started.
Which part of living here is actually different?
Housing, and by a long way. Goods cost broadly the same everywhere — a television is a television — but rent and house prices swing far wider than anything else, so the housing component is what pushes Colorado away from the national average rather than the shopping.
Does the overall figure tell me what housing costs here?
Here the two come apart: 15 of 51 overall against 4 for housing. Averaging them into one figure buries the difference.
How does an above-average price level affect real income?
Colorado's all-items regional price parity exceeds the national average, so nominal income overstates purchasing power. One hundred dollars of expenditure purchases $101 of national-average consumption. Real income comparisons across states require deflating by parity; nominal comparisons systematically favor high-price states.
Which component drives this state's parity?
The housing parity dominates Colorado's all-items figure, diverging from the national average by more than twice the goods component. Tradeable goods arbitrage across state lines and therefore cluster near parity; housing is non-tradeable, so its parity spans a far wider range and drives most interstate variation in the headline index.
Why does this state's housing rank diverge from its all-items rank?
Colorado ranks 15 of 51 on all items but 4 on the housing component. Because the all-items index weights housing at its national expenditure share rather than at the household's own, the headline figure understates housing divergence for renters and recent buyers, whose shelter share exceeds the national average.