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 New Orleans might be more expensive than living in rural Louisiana, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those New Orleans 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 New Orleans are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
93 cost of living index
105 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
100 cost of living index
101 cost of living index
99 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
124 cost of living index
107 cost of living index
96 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Louisiana’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest New Orleans hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in New Orleans, 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 68 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 New Orleans.” We’re lookin’ at you, Read Blvd East.
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 New Orleans for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read Blvd East | 93 |
| 2 | Lake Catherine | 105 |
| 3 | New Aurora-English Turn | 89 |
| 4 | Tall Timbers-Brechtel | 100 |
| 5 | Old Aurora | 101 |
| 6 | Gentilly Terrace | 99 |
| 7 | Village De L’est | 93 |
| 8 | Lake Terrace And Oaks | 124 |
| 9 | Fillmore | 107 |
| 10 | Whitney | 96 |
| 11 | Read Blvd West | 92 |
| 12 | McDonogh | 92 |
| 13 | East Riverside | 124 |
| 14 | Saint Anthony | 94 |
| 15 | Holy Cross | 96 |
| 16 | Lakeview | 135 |
| 17 | Gentilly Woods | 97 |
| 18 | Saint Bernard Area | 87 |
| 19 | Lake Shore-Lake Vista | 145 |
| 19 | Uptown | 134 |
| 21 | Florida | 87 |
| 21 | Saint Thomas | 90 |
| 21 | Gert Town | 90 |
| 24 | Holly Grove | 93 |
| 25 | City Park | 124 |
| 26 | Pontchartrain Park | 97 |
| 26 | Fairgrounds | 111 |
| 28 | Little Woods | 98 |
| 29 | Milneburg | 102 |
| 30 | Black Pearl | 127 |
| 31 | Algeirs Point | 119 |
| 31 | Us Naval Base | 105 |
| 33 | Marlyville-Fontainebleau | 130 |
| 34 | Plum Orchard | 93 |
| 34 | Behrman | 94 |
| 36 | East Carollton | 130 |
| 37 | Saint Claude | 93 |
| 38 | Broadmoor | 116 |
| 39 | Navarre | 121 |
| 40 | Freret | 119 |
| 41 | Mid-City | 115 |
| 41 | Leonidas | 109 |
| 43 | West Lake Forest | 93 |
| 44 | Saint Roch | 92 |
| 44 | Lower 9th Ward | 96 |
| 46 | Bywater | 116 |
| 47 | West Riverside | 134 |
| 47 | West End | 125 |
| 49 | Desire | 85 |
| 50 | Lower Garden District | 137 |
| 51 | Irish Channel | 134 |
| 52 | Seventh Ward | 98 |
| 52 | Bayou Saint John | 106 |
| 54 | Viavant-Venetian Isles | 85 |
| 55 | Audubon | 164 |
| 56 | Central City | 101 |
| 57 | Garden District | 133 |
| 58 | Central Business District | 130 |
| 59 | Marigny | 128 |
| 60 | Dillard | 96 |
| 61 | Milan | 122 |
| 61 | Touro | 151 |
| 63 | Pines Village | 97 |
| 64 | Fischer Dev | 96 |
| 65 | French Quarter | 137 |
| 66 | Treme’ Lafitte | 114 |
| 67 | Tulane-Gravier | 107 |
| 68 | Dixon | 106 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 68 New Orleans neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in New Orleans
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in New Orleans where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in New Orleans are Read Blvd East, Lake Catherine, New Aurora-English Turn, Tall Timbers-Brechtel, Old Aurora, Gentilly Terrace, Village De L’est, Lake Terrace And Oaks, Fillmore, and Whitney.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in New Orleans aren’t all cheap. Dixon takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in New Orleans.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Louisiana? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In New Orleans FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in New Orleans?
Read Blvd East is the cheapest neighborhood in New Orleans for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Lake Catherine and New Aurora-English Turn are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in New Orleans?
The cheapest neighborhoods in New Orleans are Read Blvd East, Lake Catherine, New Aurora-English Turn, Tall Timbers-Brechtel, Old Aurora, Gentilly Terrace, Village De L’est, Lake Terrace And Oaks, Fillmore, and Whitney. We ranked all 68 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 New Orleans ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in New Orleans?
Dixon lands at the expensive end of the 68 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
