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 Cleveland might be more expensive than living in rural Ohio, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Cleveland 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 Cleveland are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
71 cost of living index
78 cost of living index
79 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
Located in
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
79 cost of living index
79 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
81 cost of living index
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 Cleveland hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Cleveland, 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 36 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 Cleveland.” We’re lookin’ at you, Indurstrial Valley.
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 Cleveland for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indurstrial Valley | 71 |
| 2 | North Broadway | 78 |
| 3 | Union Miles Park | 79 |
| 4 | South Broadway | 80 |
| 5 | Riverside | 88 |
| 5 | Goodrich-Kirkland | 79 |
| 7 | Stockyards | 79 |
| 8 | Mt Pleasant | 80 |
| 9 | Lee Miles | 82 |
| 10 | Puritas Longmead | 81 |
| 11 | Jefferson | 84 |
| 12 | Corlett | 80 |
| 12 | North Collinwood | 81 |
| 14 | Glenville | 81 |
| 15 | Clark Fulton | 81 |
| 15 | Forest Hills | 80 |
| 17 | Saint Claire-Superior | 78 |
| 17 | Old Brooklyn | 86 |
| 19 | Kamm’s Corner | 90 |
| 20 | Euclid Green | 81 |
| 21 | West Boulevard | 83 |
| 21 | Kinsmith | 76 |
| 23 | Brooklyn Center | 81 |
| 24 | Edgewater | 89 |
| 25 | Buckeye Shaker | 86 |
| 26 | South Collinwood | 81 |
| 27 | Detroit Shoreway | 88 |
| 27 | Ohio City-West Side | 88 |
| 29 | Fairfax | 81 |
| 29 | Tremont | 96 |
| 29 | Hough | 84 |
| 32 | Woodland Hills | 81 |
| 33 | Cudell | 81 |
| 34 | Downtown | 96 |
| 35 | Central | 82 |
| 36 | University District | 89 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 36 Cleveland neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Cleveland
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Cleveland where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Cleveland are Indurstrial Valley, North Broadway, Union Miles Park, South Broadway, Riverside, Goodrich-Kirkland, Stockyards, Mt Pleasant, Lee Miles, and Puritas Longmead.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Cleveland aren’t all cheap. University District takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Cleveland.
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 Cleveland FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Cleveland?
Indurstrial Valley is the cheapest neighborhood in Cleveland for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. North Broadway and Union Miles Park are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Cleveland?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Cleveland are Indurstrial Valley, North Broadway, Union Miles Park, South Broadway, Riverside, Goodrich-Kirkland, Stockyards, Mt Pleasant, Lee Miles, and Puritas Longmead. We ranked all 36 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 Cleveland ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Cleveland?
University District lands at the expensive end of the 36 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
