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 Riverside might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Riverside 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 Riverside are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
139 cost of living index
133 cost of living index
144 cost of living index
131 cost of living index
131 cost of living index
145 cost of living index
166 cost of living index
129 cost of living index
128 cost of living index
153 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is California’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Riverside hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Riverside, 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 28 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 Riverside.” We’re lookin’ at you, Sycamore Canyon 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 Riverside for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sycamore Canyon Park | 139 |
| 2 | La Sierra South | 133 |
| 3 | Mission Grove | 144 |
| 4 | Northside | 131 |
| 4 | La Sierra Acres | 131 |
| 6 | Victoria | 145 |
| 7 | Hawarden Hills | 166 |
| 8 | Magnolia Center | 129 |
| 9 | Eastside | 128 |
| 10 | Orangecrest | 153 |
| 10 | La Sierra Hills | 140 |
| 12 | Arlington Heights | 144 |
| 13 | Grand | 133 |
| 14 | La Sierra | 130 |
| 15 | Hunter Industrial Park | 120 |
| 16 | Wood Streets | 137 |
| 16 | Casablanca | 129 |
| 18 | Canyon Springs | 139 |
| 19 | Arlanza | 128 |
| 19 | Presidential Park | 132 |
| 21 | Airport | 133 |
| 22 | Ramona | 131 |
| 23 | Arlington | 127 |
| 24 | Alessandro Heights | 190 |
| 25 | Canyon Crest | 150 |
| 26 | Downtown | 132 |
| 27 | University | 129 |
| 28 | Arlington South | 142 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 28 Riverside neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Riverside
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Riverside where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Riverside are Sycamore Canyon Park, La Sierra South, Mission Grove, Northside, La Sierra Acres, Victoria, Hawarden Hills, Magnolia Center, Eastside, and Orangecrest.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Riverside aren’t all cheap. Arlington South takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Riverside.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on California? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Riverside FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Riverside?
Sycamore Canyon Park is the cheapest neighborhood in Riverside for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. La Sierra South and Mission Grove are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Riverside?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Riverside are Sycamore Canyon Park, La Sierra South, Mission Grove, Northside, La Sierra Acres, Victoria, Hawarden Hills, Magnolia Center, Eastside, and Orangecrest. We ranked all 28 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 Riverside ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Riverside?
Arlington South lands at the expensive end of the 28 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
