Everything else equal, we can all agree that living in a cheaper place is better than living in a more expensive place.
I’d much rather pay $500/mo in rent than $1,000. And I’d rather pay $2 for coffee than $5.
And while every neighborhood in Buffalo might be more expensive than living in rural New York, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Buffalo neighborhoods where your dollar goes a little further — you can get that one bedroom instead of the studio?
Instead of relying on public opinion and speculation, we wanted to get the facts straight and determine which neighborhoods in Buffalo are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
88 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
83 cost of living index
78 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
79 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is New York’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Buffalo hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Buffalo, we had to determine what criteria define “cheap” and then apply Saturday Night Science.
Using Census and extrapolated BLS data, we arrived at the following set of criteria:
- Overall Cost Of Living
- Rent To Income Ratio
- Median Home Value To Income Ratio
We then ranked each neighborhood with scores from 1 to 52 in each category, where 1 was the cheapest.
Next, we averaged the rankings for each neighborhood to create a cheap neighborhood index.
And finally, we crowned the neighborhood with the lowest cheapest neighborhood index, the “Cheapest City Neighborhood In Buffalo.” We’re lookin’ at you, South Abbott.
We updated this article for 2026. Skip to the end to see the list of all the neighborhoods in the city, from cheapest to most expensive.
The full plate
Detailed list of the cheapest neighborhoods to live in Buffalo for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Abbott | 88 |
| 2 | Tifft | 80 |
| 3 | Triangle | 82 |
| 4 | Cold Spring | 83 |
| 5 | Medical Park | 78 |
| 6 | Kaisertown | 82 |
| 7 | Abbott McKinley | 88 |
| 7 | Kenfield | 80 |
| 9 | Genesee Moselle | 79 |
| 10 | Kingsley | 80 |
| 11 | Grider | 80 |
| 11 | Valley | 79 |
| 13 | South Park | 88 |
| 14 | Broadway-Fillmore | 78 |
| 15 | Lovejoy | 80 |
| 16 | Kensington | 83 |
| 17 | First Ward | 79 |
| 18 | Seneca | 83 |
| 19 | Schiller Park | 80 |
| 19 | Hamlin Park | 86 |
| 21 | Emerson | 79 |
| 22 | Cazenovia Park | 84 |
| 23 | University | 90 |
| 24 | Mlk Park | 81 |
| 25 | Military | 84 |
| 25 | Lasalle | 85 |
| 27 | South Ellicott | 82 |
| 28 | Babcock | 80 |
| 28 | Starin Central | 102 |
| 30 | Emslie | 82 |
| 31 | Riverside Park | 81 |
| 32 | Grant Ferry | 94 |
| 33 | Delaware Park | 100 |
| 34 | Masten Park | 80 |
| 35 | North Park | 101 |
| 36 | Parkside | 104 |
| 37 | Leroy | 86 |
| 38 | Black Rock | 88 |
| 39 | Forest | 102 |
| 40 | Park Meadow | 107 |
| 41 | North Delaware | 93 |
| 42 | Squaw Island | 84 |
| 43 | Delaware-West Ferry | 112 |
| 44 | Waterfront | 127 |
| 45 | Albright | 123 |
| 46 | Allen | 103 |
| 47 | Front Park | 97 |
| 48 | Central Business District | 123 |
| 49 | Willert Park | 92 |
| 50 | Bryant | 112 |
| 51 | Columbus | 105 |
| 52 | Lakeview | 97 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 52 Buffalo neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Buffalo
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Buffalo where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Buffalo are South Abbott, Tifft, Triangle, Cold Spring, Medical Park, Kaisertown, Abbott McKinley, Kenfield, Genesee Moselle, and Kingsley.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Buffalo aren’t all cheap. Lakeview takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Buffalo.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on New York? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Buffalo FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Buffalo?
South Abbott is the cheapest neighborhood in Buffalo for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Tifft and Triangle are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Buffalo?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Buffalo are South Abbott, Tifft, Triangle, Cold Spring, Medical Park, Kaisertown, Abbott McKinley, Kenfield, Genesee Moselle, and Kingsley. We ranked all 52 neighborhoods in the city.
How do you decide which neighborhoods are cheapest?
Three measures: an overall cost of living index, rent-to-income, and home-value-to-income, all from Census tract data. Scoring costs against local incomes keeps one luxury tower from skewing the math.
Is a cheap neighborhood a bad neighborhood?
Not necessarily — this ranking measures what things cost relative to income, nothing else. Check our safest neighborhoods in Buffalo ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Buffalo?
Lakeview lands at the expensive end of the 52 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
