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 San Antonio might be more expensive than living in rural Texas, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those San Antonio 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 San Antonio are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
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The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Texas’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest San Antonio hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in San Antonio, 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 282 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 San Antonio.” We’re lookin’ at you, Valley Forest.
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 San Antonio for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valley Forest | 84 |
| 2 | Meadow Village | 86 |
| 3 | Valley Hi North | 91 |
| 3 | Stablewood-Valley Hi North | 91 |
| 5 | Lago Vista-South Southwest | 90 |
| 6 | Village At Big Country | 87 |
| 6 | Hunters Chase | 93 |
| 8 | Highland Oaks | 85 |
| 9 | Braun Willow | 90 |
| 10 | Greater Gardendale | 82 |
| 11 | Stanton Run | 99 |
| 12 | Lakeside | 90 |
| 13 | Woodlawn Lake | 86 |
| 14 | Highland Hills | 86 |
| 15 | Quintana Community | 83 |
| 16 | St James Place | 92 |
| 17 | Hunters Brook-Hunters Chase | 102 |
| 18 | Woller Creek | 98 |
| 19 | Alamo Farmsteads-Babcock Road-Westfield | 97 |
| 20 | Northhampton | 95 |
| 21 | Southwest | 85 |
| 22 | Feather Ridge | 94 |
| 23 | Southeast Side | 84 |
| 24 | Ventura | 94 |
| 25 | Westwood Village | 82 |
| 26 | Hidden Cove-Indian Creek-Southwest | 82 |
| 27 | Culebra Park-Third World | 87 |
| 27 | Silverbrook | 105 |
| 29 | Hidden Meadow | 93 |
| 30 | Churchill Estates | 105 |
| 31 | University Park | 87 |
| 32 | Woodlake | 92 |
| 33 | South Southwest | 88 |
| 34 | Northwest Crossing | 96 |
| 35 | Third World | 86 |
| 36 | Stone Wood | 94 |
| 37 | Los Angeles Heights-Keystone | 85 |
| 38 | San Antonio Creekside | 99 |
| 38 | Community Workers Council-Los Jardines | 82 |
| 40 | Prospect Hill | 82 |
| 41 | Whisper Hollow | 100 |
| 42 | Thompson Community | 84 |
| 43 | Sunny Slope | 85 |
| 44 | Regency Meadow | 107 |
| 45 | Tierra Linda | 86 |
| 46 | United Westwood | 85 |
| 47 | Villages Of Westcreek | 100 |
| 48 | Candlewood Park | 92 |
| 49 | East Village | 88 |
| 50 | Wheatley Heights | 83 |
| 51 | San Antonio Cambridge Village-East Terrell Hills | 91 |
| 52 | The Estates At Stonegate | 104 |
| 53 | Sunrise | 87 |
| 54 | Ridgehaven Volunteer | 107 |
| 55 | Dellcrest Area | 86 |
| 56 | Harvard Place-Eastlawn | 78 |
| 56 | Pecan Valley | 90 |
| 58 | Adams Hill | 95 |
| 59 | Shearer Hills-Ridgeview | 89 |
| 60 | Olmos Park Terrace | 95 |
| 61 | Springvale | 88 |
| 62 | Brady Gardens | 85 |
| 63 | Fairways Of Woodlake | 96 |
| 64 | Culebra Park | 88 |
| 65 | Meadowbrook | 92 |
| 66 | Thunderbird Hills | 91 |
| 66 | Hunters Creek | 111 |
| 68 | General Krueger | 88 |
| 69 | Tanglewood | 107 |
| 70 | Knollcreek | 102 |
| 71 | Kingsborough Ridge | 90 |
| 72 | Estates-Mission Hills | 94 |
| 73 | Trophy Ridge | 104 |
| 73 | Woodridge | 105 |
| 75 | Northwood Hills Improvement Club | 104 |
| 75 | East Terrell Hills | 88 |
| 77 | Braun Station East | 111 |
| 78 | Guilbeau Park | 100 |
| 79 | Coliseum-Willow Park | 84 |
| 80 | Denver Heights | 85 |
| 80 | The Terraces At Encino Creek | 109 |
| 82 | Community Workers Council | 82 |
| 83 | Loma Park | 86 |
| 84 | Avenida Guadalupe | 81 |
| 85 | Donaldson Terrace | 87 |
| 85 | Collins Garden | 84 |
| 87 | High Country | 99 |
| 87 | Great Northwest | 97 |
| 89 | Jefferson-Monticello Park | 102 |
| 89 | Hart Ranch Unit One | 107 |
| 89 | Jade Oaks | 107 |
| 92 | Highland Park | 86 |
| 93 | Hidden Oaks Estates | 106 |
| 93 | Overlook Of Carriage Hills | 110 |
| 95 | Ridgestone | 98 |
| 95 | Hunters Mill | 98 |
| 97 | Park Place | 100 |
| 98 | Spring Creek | 96 |
| 99 | North San Antonio Hills | 115 |
| 100 | Oak Creek | 103 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 282 San Antonio neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in San Antonio
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in San Antonio where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in San Antonio are Valley Forest, Meadow Village, Valley Hi North, Stablewood-Valley Hi North, Lago Vista-South Southwest, Village At Big Country, Hunters Chase, Highland Oaks, Braun Willow, and Greater Gardendale.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in San Antonio aren’t all cheap. Westfort Alliance takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in San Antonio.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Texas? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In San Antonio FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in San Antonio?
Valley Forest is the cheapest neighborhood in San Antonio for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Meadow Village and Valley Hi North are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in San Antonio?
The cheapest neighborhoods in San Antonio are Valley Forest, Meadow Village, Valley Hi North, Stablewood-Valley Hi North, Lago Vista-South Southwest, Village At Big Country, Hunters Chase, Highland Oaks, Braun Willow, and Greater Gardendale. We ranked all 282 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 San Antonio ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in San Antonio?
Westfort Alliance lands at the expensive end of the 282 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
