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 Chicago might be more expensive than living in rural Illinois, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Chicago 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 Chicago are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
99 cost of living index
97 cost of living index
115 cost of living index
110 cost of living index
115 cost of living index
101 cost of living index
105 cost of living index
97 cost of living index
95 cost of living index
97 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Illinois’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Chicago hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Chicago, 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 77 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 Chicago.” We’re lookin’ at you, Clearing.
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 Chicago for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clearing | 99 |
| 2 | East Side | 97 |
| 3 | Beverly | 115 |
| 4 | Garfield Ridge | 110 |
| 5 | Mount Greenwood | 115 |
| 5 | Calumet Heights | 101 |
| 7 | West Elsdon | 105 |
| 8 | South Chicago | 97 |
| 9 | West Pullman | 95 |
| 10 | Hegewisch | 97 |
| 10 | Burnside | 97 |
| 12 | Norwood Park | 111 |
| 13 | Washington Heights | 101 |
| 14 | Morgan Park | 100 |
| 15 | West Lawn | 105 |
| 16 | Dunning | 115 |
| 17 | New City | 93 |
| 18 | Douglas | 97 |
| 19 | Chatham | 101 |
| 20 | Ashburn | 109 |
| 20 | South Deering | 93 |
| 20 | Pullman | 100 |
| 23 | Roseland | 97 |
| 24 | Gage Park | 100 |
| 25 | Auburn Gresham | 94 |
| 26 | McKinley Park | 108 |
| 26 | West Englewood | 94 |
| 28 | Edison Park | 140 |
| 29 | Jefferson Park | 119 |
| 30 | Chicago Lawn | 97 |
| 30 | Brighton Park | 103 |
| 32 | Pottage Park | 110 |
| 33 | Forest Glen | 132 |
| 34 | Loop | 126 |
| 34 | South Lawndale | 96 |
| 36 | Montclare | 114 |
| 37 | Austin | 98 |
| 38 | Avalon Park | 103 |
| 39 | North Park | 116 |
| 40 | West Ridge | 109 |
| 41 | O’hare | 112 |
| 42 | Englewood | 94 |
| 42 | Hermosa | 110 |
| 44 | South Shore | 100 |
| 45 | Belmont Cragin | 105 |
| 46 | Avondale | 130 |
| 47 | Grand Boulevard | 99 |
| 48 | Riverdale | 91 |
| 49 | Lake View | 153 |
| 50 | Near South Side | 123 |
| 51 | Near North Side | 137 |
| 52 | North Center | 161 |
| 53 | Grand Crossing | 98 |
| 53 | North Lawndale | 95 |
| 55 | Albany Park | 122 |
| 56 | Edgewater | 131 |
| 57 | Lincoln Square | 143 |
| 58 | Rogers Park | 111 |
| 59 | Lower West Side | 105 |
| 59 | West Town | 142 |
| 61 | Lincoln Park | 170 |
| 62 | Irving Park | 134 |
| 63 | Fuller Park | 101 |
| 64 | Logan Square | 131 |
| 65 | Oakland | 119 |
| 66 | Archer Heights | 104 |
| 67 | Bridgeport | 121 |
| 68 | West Garfield Park | 103 |
| 69 | Humboldt Park | 121 |
| 70 | Kenwood | 123 |
| 71 | Uptown | 118 |
| 72 | Armour Square | 105 |
| 73 | Washington Park | 104 |
| 74 | Near West Side | 135 |
| 75 | East Garfield Park | 107 |
| 76 | Hyde Park | 125 |
| 77 | Woodlawn | 115 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 77 Chicago neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Chicago
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Chicago where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Chicago are Clearing, East Side, Beverly, Garfield Ridge, Mount Greenwood, Calumet Heights, West Elsdon, South Chicago, West Pullman, and Hegewisch.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Chicago aren’t all cheap. Woodlawn takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Chicago.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Illinois? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Chicago FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Chicago?
Clearing is the cheapest neighborhood in Chicago for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. East Side and Beverly are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Chicago?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Chicago are Clearing, East Side, Beverly, Garfield Ridge, Mount Greenwood, Calumet Heights, West Elsdon, South Chicago, West Pullman, and Hegewisch. We ranked all 77 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 Chicago ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Chicago?
Woodlawn lands at the expensive end of the 77 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
