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 Salt Lake City might be more expensive than living in rural Utah, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Salt Lake City 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 Salt Lake City are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
108 cost of living index
106 cost of living index
111 cost of living index
107 cost of living index
104 cost of living index
133 cost of living index
148 cost of living index
129 cost of living index
113 cost of living index
156 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Utah’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Salt Lake City hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Salt Lake City, 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 19 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 Salt Lake City.” We’re lookin’ at you, Rose 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 Salt Lake City for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rose Park | 108 |
| 2 | Central City-Liberty Welss | 106 |
| 2 | Westpointe | 111 |
| 4 | Glendale | 107 |
| 5 | Poplar Grove | 104 |
| 6 | Greater Avenues | 133 |
| 7 | Wasatch Hollow | 148 |
| 8 | Sugar House | 129 |
| 9 | Liberty Wells | 113 |
| 10 | East Bench | 156 |
| 11 | Fairpark | 108 |
| 12 | Yalecrest | 166 |
| 13 | Bonneville Hills | 140 |
| 14 | Arcadia Heights | 163 |
| 15 | People’s Freeway | 112 |
| 16 | Downtown | 117 |
| 16 | Central City | 122 |
| 18 | Capitol Hill | 128 |
| 19 | East Central | 128 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 19 Salt Lake City neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Salt Lake City
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Salt Lake City where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Salt Lake City are Rose Park, Central City-Liberty Welss, Westpointe, Glendale, Poplar Grove, Greater Avenues, Wasatch Hollow, Sugar House, Liberty Wells, and East Bench.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Salt Lake City aren’t all cheap. East Central takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Salt Lake City.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Utah? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Salt Lake City FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Salt Lake City?
Rose Park is the cheapest neighborhood in Salt Lake City for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Central City-Liberty Welss and Westpointe are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Salt Lake City?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Salt Lake City are Rose Park, Central City-Liberty Welss, Westpointe, Glendale, Poplar Grove, Greater Avenues, Wasatch Hollow, Sugar House, Liberty Wells, and East Bench. We ranked all 19 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 Salt Lake City ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Salt Lake City?
East Central lands at the expensive end of the 19 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
