Commute & Cost-of-Living Explorer

The Question Everyone Asks Wrong

"Is Austin cheaper than Seattle?" is the wrong question. The right question is: "If I move from Seattle to Austin, what do I gain in housing cost and what do I lose in income, commute time, and affordability ratio?"

Every "cost of living calculator" on the internet gives you a single number. But the tradeoff is multidimensional: income changes, rent changes, commute changes, and the ratio between them changes. A $120K salary in Seattle and an $85K salary in Austin are not comparable without knowing what housing costs in each place.

What I Built

A metro-area comparison tool that pulls real Census data and lays it out visually. Pick up to 5 metros, see them side by side on seven metrics:

1. Median household income -- what people actually earn
2. Median rent -- what renters actually pay per month
3. Median home value -- what buying costs
4. Average commute -- mean travel time to work
5. Rent burden -- rent as a percentage of income (the real affordability signal)
6. Price-to-income ratio -- home value divided by income (housing stretch factor)
7. Population -- metro area size for context

Quick presets let you compare tech hubs, the Big 4, or Sun Belt metros in one click.

Why Bars Instead of Numbers

A table of numbers is hard to compare across 5 cities. When you see "Seattle: $93K, Austin: $82K, Denver: $87K" you have to mentally rank them. The horizontal bar chart does that ranking for you instantly. The best value in each metric is marked with an asterisk so the tradeoffs jump out without effort.

The Data Source

All data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates. The ACS surveys 3.5 million households annually and produces the most reliable sub-national economic data in the country. The 5-year estimates smooth out volatility and cover every metro area, not just the large ones.

The API is free (just needs a key) and the data updates annually. The server-side cache uses a 24-hour TTL since Census data does not change within a day.

What This Proves

The Census API has been free and public for over a decade. The data behind every "best cities" listicle comes from the same ACS tables this tool queries. But nobody wraps it in a comparison UI because the API is awkward and the variable names are cryptic (B19013_001E for median income). The builder's job is to translate that into something a normal person can use in 30 seconds.