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 Newark might be more expensive than living in rural New Jersey, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Newark 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 Newark are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
89 cost of living index
98 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
104 cost of living index
100 cost of living index
98 cost of living index
95 cost of living index
101 cost of living index
112 cost of living index
109 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is New Jersey’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Newark hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Newark, 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 20 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 Newark.” We’re lookin’ at you, Dayton-Weequahic Park.
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 Newark for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dayton-Weequahic Park | 89 |
| 2 | Central Business District | 98 |
| 3 | Springfield-Belmont | 89 |
| 4 | Lower Vailsburg | 104 |
| 5 | University Heights | 100 |
| 6 | Lower Clinton Hill | 98 |
| 7 | South Broad Street | 95 |
| 8 | Mount Pleasant | 101 |
| 9 | Upper Vailsburg | 112 |
| 10 | North Ironbound | 109 |
| 11 | Seventh Avenue | 101 |
| 11 | Lower Roseville | 99 |
| 13 | Upper Roseville | 108 |
| 14 | Weequahic | 113 |
| 14 | West Side | 101 |
| 16 | Forest Hill | 107 |
| 16 | Fairmuont | 102 |
| 18 | South Ironbound | 115 |
| 19 | North Broadway | 109 |
| 20 | Upper Clinton Hill | 111 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 20 Newark neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Newark
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Newark where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Newark are Dayton-Weequahic Park, Central Business District, Springfield-Belmont, Lower Vailsburg, University Heights, Lower Clinton Hill, South Broad Street, Mount Pleasant, Upper Vailsburg, and North Ironbound.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Newark aren’t all cheap. Upper Clinton Hill takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Newark.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on New Jersey? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Newark FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Newark?
Dayton-Weequahic Park is the cheapest neighborhood in Newark for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Central Business District and Springfield-Belmont are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Newark?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Newark are Dayton-Weequahic Park, Central Business District, Springfield-Belmont, Lower Vailsburg, University Heights, Lower Clinton Hill, South Broad Street, Mount Pleasant, Upper Vailsburg, and North Ironbound. We ranked all 20 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 Newark ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Newark?
Upper Clinton Hill lands at the expensive end of the 20 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
