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 Cincinnati might be more expensive than living in rural Ohio, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Cincinnati 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 Cincinnati are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
89 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
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90 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
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The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Ohio’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Cincinnati hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Cincinnati, 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 45 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 Cincinnati.” We’re lookin’ at you, Hartwell.
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 Cincinnati for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hartwell | 89 |
| 2 | West Price Hill | 88 |
| 3 | Camp Washington | 92 |
| 4 | Sayler Park | 90 |
| 5 | Carthage | 89 |
| 6 | Mount Washington | 96 |
| 7 | South Fairmount | 87 |
| 8 | Sedamsville | 89 |
| 8 | South Cumminsville | 80 |
| 10 | Mount Airy | 91 |
| 11 | Linwood | 114 |
| 11 | Westwood | 90 |
| 13 | Riverside | 90 |
| 14 | East Price Hill | 88 |
| 15 | College Hill | 93 |
| 16 | Madisonville | 99 |
| 17 | Pleasant Ridge | 101 |
| 17 | Lower Price Hill | 89 |
| 19 | Northside | 99 |
| 20 | California | 119 |
| 21 | North Fairmount | 87 |
| 21 | East End | 109 |
| 23 | Winton Hills | 88 |
| 23 | Kennedy Heights | 100 |
| 25 | Bond Hill | 92 |
| 26 | Mount Lookout | 120 |
| 27 | Winton Place | 92 |
| 28 | Oakley | 110 |
| 29 | Mount Auburn | 94 |
| 30 | Columbia-Tusculum | 122 |
| 31 | Mount Adams | 124 |
| 32 | East Westwood | 89 |
| 33 | Evanston | 102 |
| 34 | Hyde Park | 128 |
| 35 | Roselawn | 92 |
| 36 | Paddock Hills | 97 |
| 37 | West End | 108 |
| 38 | Clifton | 108 |
| 38 | Avondale | 91 |
| 40 | Over-The-Rhine | 116 |
| 41 | Walnut Hills | 102 |
| 42 | Cuf | 97 |
| 43 | North Avondale | 109 |
| 44 | Central Business District | 127 |
| 45 | Corryville | 95 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 45 Cincinnati neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Cincinnati
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Cincinnati where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Cincinnati are Hartwell, West Price Hill, Camp Washington, Sayler Park, Carthage, Mount Washington, South Fairmount, Sedamsville, South Cumminsville, and Mount Airy.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Cincinnati aren’t all cheap. Corryville takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Cincinnati.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Ohio? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Cincinnati FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Cincinnati?
Hartwell is the cheapest neighborhood in Cincinnati for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. West Price Hill and Camp Washington are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Cincinnati?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Cincinnati are Hartwell, West Price Hill, Camp Washington, Sayler Park, Carthage, Mount Washington, South Fairmount, Sedamsville, South Cumminsville, and Mount Airy. We ranked all 45 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 Cincinnati ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Cincinnati?
Corryville lands at the expensive end of the 45 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
