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 Little Rock might be more expensive than living in rural Arkansas, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Little Rock 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 Little Rock are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
85 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
86 cost of living index
87 cost of living index
92 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
86 cost of living index
100 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Arkansas’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Little Rock hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Little Rock, 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 27 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 Little Rock.” We’re lookin’ at you, Big Dickinson Lake.
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 Little Rock for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Big Dickinson Lake | 85 |
| 2 | 65th Street West | 85 |
| 3 | Cloverdale Watson | 88 |
| 4 | Upper Baseline | 86 |
| 5 | Chicot West | 87 |
| 6 | South Geyer Springs | 92 |
| 6 | South End | 85 |
| 8 | Wakefield | 86 |
| 8 | Reservoir | 100 |
| 10 | Stephens | 89 |
| 11 | Briarwood | 94 |
| 12 | River Mountain | 112 |
| 13 | Oak Forest | 87 |
| 14 | John Barrow | 91 |
| 15 | Midtown | 103 |
| 16 | West Markham | 96 |
| 17 | Rock Creek | 109 |
| 18 | East Of I-30 | 88 |
| 19 | Central High | 90 |
| 20 | Walnut Valley | 98 |
| 21 | Otter Creek Crystal | 100 |
| 22 | Boyle Park | 92 |
| 23 | Hillcrest | 113 |
| 23 | Heights | 123 |
| 23 | Capital View-Stiff | 95 |
| 26 | Downtown | 92 |
| 27 | Westwood-Pecan Lake | 97 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 27 Little Rock neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Little Rock
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Little Rock where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Little Rock are Big Dickinson Lake, 65th Street West, Cloverdale Watson, Upper Baseline, Chicot West, South Geyer Springs, South End, Wakefield, Reservoir, and Stephens.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Little Rock aren’t all cheap. Westwood-Pecan Lake takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Little Rock.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Arkansas? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Little Rock FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Little Rock?
Big Dickinson Lake is the cheapest neighborhood in Little Rock for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. 65th Street West and Cloverdale Watson are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Little Rock?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Little Rock are Big Dickinson Lake, 65th Street West, Cloverdale Watson, Upper Baseline, Chicot West, South Geyer Springs, South End, Wakefield, Reservoir, and Stephens. We ranked all 27 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 Little Rock ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Little Rock?
Westwood-Pecan Lake lands at the expensive end of the 27 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
