Cheapest (and most expensive) places to live in Texas

Ranking 1: overall price level

The Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities (RPP) compare the cost of the same basket of goods, services and housing across metro areas. It is the closest thing to a single, consistent “is it cheaper here?” number, and it is free. A value of 90 means prices about 10% below the national average. These are metro figures, so Dallas and Fort Worth share one value.

Cheaper still: three metros we don’t cover yet

Our twelve cities don’t include the very cheapest corners of the state. Three metros without their own pages here rank among the cheapest in the state. Only Texarkana actually comes in below McAllen, but all three beat El Paso:

All three are BEA 2024 figures via FRED (released Feb 19, 2026). Brownsville-Harlingen (85.975 unrounded) is a hair above McAllen (85.895). The Texarkana metro straddles the Arkansas line, so part of it is not in Texas. We have not yet gathered rents, home prices or living wages for these three, which is why they are not in the tables below.

Ranking 2: one-bedroom rent

For eight cities this is Apartment List’s median rent on new 1-bedroom leases. For four cities (Amarillo, College Station, McAllen and Waco) Apartment List did not publish a 1-bedroom figure this month, so we fall back to RentCafe’s average 1-bedroom rent in large managed buildings. Those rows are marked RC. The two sources measure different things, so a gap of $20 or $30 between an RC row and an Apartment List row does not mean much.

• The fallback cuts both ways. RentCafe’s large-building average usually runs above Apartment List’s median (Houston: $1,193 vs. $1,116), but not always: in Lubbock it was $887 vs. $974. So we can’t tell you which way the four RC rows would move under Apartment List’s method.
• McAllen has a second figure. Zillow’s average asking rent for 1-bedrooms across all listed rentals was $850 (Sep 2026). Our comparison table uses that one. McAllen ranks first on either figure.
• Apartment List does publish an all-sizes median for the three smaller cities: Amarillo $1,287, College Station $1,244 and Waco $1,127 (Oct 2026). Those include bigger units, so they are not 1-bedroom prices. More on rents is on Texas rent.

Ranking 3: median home price

This is the shakiest of the five rankings, because there is no single source that reports the same kind of median for every city. Seven figures are metro medians from one quarterly report. Houston, San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin come from local sources, cover different areas and different months, and in Austin’s case cover only the city. Read the notes before you lean on a close call.

• ^a Greater Houston single-family median, HAR, Sep 2026.
• ^b 13-county DFW median, MLS sales over $100k, Apr 2025 to Apr 2026, via The Real Deal (published Jun 8, 2026). Not a city-only figure, which is why Dallas and Fort Worth tie.
• ^d City of Austin median, Unlock MLS, Aug 2026. On the metro figure ($412,000), Austin would still rank last, just ahead of DFW rather than far behind it.
• ^e San Antonio area median, SABOR, Sep 2026.
• ^f Metro (MSA) median, Q1 2026, Texas REALTORS quarterly report using Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center data.

A low price is not the whole cost of owning. Property tax and insurance vary a lot by county and school district; see Texas property taxes, Texas insurance and Texas home prices.

Ranking 4: living wage for one adult

MIT’s Living Wage Calculator estimates the hourly pay a full-time worker needs to cover a bare-bones budget (housing, food, health care, transportation, taxes) with no public help. It is a floor, not a comfortable income. This is the figure for one adult with no children, at the metro level. Lubbock and Amarillo round to the same hourly wage, so we break the tie on MIT’s yearly figure.

The order changes for families. For two working parents with two kids, Austin ($27.13 per adult) passes DFW ($26.40) to become the most expensive metro on this measure (MIT, Feb 15, 2026).

Ranking 5: rent compared with local income

A cheap rent is only cheap if local paychecks keep up. This table divides a year of 1-bedroom rent by the city’s median household income. The ratio is our math: 1BR rent × 12 ÷ median household income. Lower is more affordable. The rent and income figures are sourced; the yearly rent and the percentage are our arithmetic. Rows marked RC use the RentCafe fallback rent from Ranking 2.

How to read this one

• It compares a renter’s cost with every household’s income. Median household income includes homeowners and two-earner households, who tend to earn more than a single renter. So the percentages are lower than what a typical one-person renter actually pays. Use the ranking, not the exact share.
• College Station’s income is pulled down by students. Its city median of $50,523 is the lowest of the twelve, and a big student population is the main reason. That makes its ratio look worse for a working adult than it probably is.
• Dallas uses a different survey. Its income is a 5-year average rather than a 1-year figure, so its position next to Houston is close enough to call a draw.
• McAllen on Zillow’s figure. Using Zillow’s $850 instead of RentCafe’s $890, McAllen’s ratio would be 16.7% (our math), which moves it from 5th to 4th, just behind Fort Worth.

The overall view: why the rankings disagree

Here is every city’s place on each of the five measures, side by side. 1 is cheapest or most affordable. These ranks are our arithmetic from the tables above. We deliberately do not add them up into one score: the measures overlap (rent feeds into both the price level and the living wage), they cover different areas, and any weighting we picked would be a judgment call dressed up as data.

What explains the differences

• McAllen and El Paso are cheap on every price measure. They hold the top two spots for price level and living wage and sit in the top four for rent and home prices. They slip on rent versus income only because local incomes are lower too.
• Income flips the big cities. Austin is the most expensive place to buy and near the top for rent, but its city median household income ($90,430) is the highest of the twelve, so rent takes the smallest share. Fort Worth gets the same lift from an $82,503 median. If you are moving with a big-city salary, those two look much better than their price tags.
• College Station looks cheap and isn’t, for renters. Its metro price level is the third lowest, but student demand pushes rents up while student households pull the income median down. That is why it ranks 3rd on one measure and 12th on another.
• Metro vs. city. Price level and living wage describe a whole metro; rent and income describe the city itself. Dallas and Fort Worth share metro figures but have very different city incomes, which is why they tie on three measures and sit six places apart on rent versus income.
• Home prices are the least comparable column. They mix metro, county-group and city-only medians from different months. Lubbock’s first place is solid; the order in the middle (Corpus Christi, Waco, San Antonio, College Station) is close enough that a different source could reshuffle it.
• Things these rankings leave out. Property tax, insurance, electricity and water vary a lot by city and can outweigh a small rent gap. Each city page lists what we have confirmed; statewide rules are on Texas taxes.

So which is the cheapest place to live in Texas? On prices alone, McAllen among the cities we cover, and Texarkana if you widen the net to every Texas metro. On what your paycheck can carry, it depends on what you earn: a local wage goes furthest in places like Amarillo and San Antonio, and a high salary goes furthest in Austin or Fort Worth. The how-much-to-live page walks through the income side in more detail.

Out-of-date numbers you’ll still find online

Coming changes to watch

• Dec 10, 2026: BEA releases 2025 price levels, which will reorder Ranking 1 (BEA).
• Now: the 2025 Census ACS was released Oct 29, 2026. New incomes will change Ranking 5 when we update.
• Monthly: Apartment List and RentCafe rents change every month; we recheck them with each update.

Keep going

• Compare Texas cities: every measure for all twelve cities in one table.
• How much you need to make to live in Texas: living wages for families and a sample budget.
• Texas rent and Texas home prices: more detail on housing costs.
• Texas cost index: how price levels are measured.
• Moving to Texas: the first-month checklist.

How we check

Every figure links to its source and shows the date it applies to. When we rank, divide or compare sourced numbers, we label it as our math. We would rather leave a city out of a table than fill a cell with a number we can’t source. Read the full methodology.