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 Bernardino might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those San Bernardino 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 Bernardino are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
105 cost of living index
111 cost of living index
105 cost of living index
110 cost of living index
115 cost of living index
124 cost of living index
106 cost of living index
110 cost of living index
92 cost of living index
106 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 San Bernardino hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in San Bernardino, 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 49 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 Bernardino.” We’re lookin’ at you, Carvedale.
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 Bernardino for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carvedale | 105 |
| 2 | Roosevelt | 111 |
| 3 | Pacific | 105 |
| 4 | Sandin Hills | 110 |
| 5 | Curtis | 115 |
| 6 | Yerdemont | 124 |
| 7 | Muscoy | 106 |
| 8 | Terrace | 110 |
| 9 | Lankershim | 92 |
| 10 | East Valley | 106 |
| 10 | Riverview | 120 |
| 12 | Valley College | 113 |
| 13 | Amtrak | 103 |
| 14 | North Park | 127 |
| 15 | Show Place | 114 |
| 16 | Rancho West | 116 |
| 17 | Nena | 127 |
| 18 | Belevedere | 131 |
| 19 | Muscupiabe | 117 |
| 20 | Hudson | 127 |
| 21 | Wildwood Park | 118 |
| 22 | Drnag | 120 |
| 22 | Kendall | 130 |
| 24 | Blair Park | 121 |
| 25 | Cimmeron | 131 |
| 26 | Alessandro | 110 |
| 27 | La Plaza | 113 |
| 28 | Cajon | 124 |
| 29 | Perris Hills | 116 |
| 30 | Seccombe Lane | 113 |
| 31 | Arrowhead | 121 |
| 31 | Wilson | 121 |
| 33 | Lytle Creek | 107 |
| 34 | Ne-Sterling | 101 |
| 35 | San Gorgonio | 116 |
| 36 | South Pointe | 134 |
| 37 | California | 128 |
| 38 | Feldheym | 113 |
| 38 | Dmv | 115 |
| 40 | International | 117 |
| 41 | Mount Vernon | 115 |
| 42 | Sbhs | 117 |
| 43 | Arrowview | 122 |
| 43 | Hi-30 | 124 |
| 45 | Delman | 116 |
| 46 | Carousel | 115 |
| 47 | Valley View | 123 |
| 48 | University | 126 |
| 49 | Ridgeline | 130 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 49 San Bernardino neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in San Bernardino
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in San Bernardino where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in San Bernardino are Carvedale, Roosevelt, Pacific, Sandin Hills, Curtis, Yerdemont, Muscoy, Terrace, Lankershim, and East Valley.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in San Bernardino aren’t all cheap. Ridgeline takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in San Bernardino.
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 San Bernardino FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in San Bernardino?
Carvedale is the cheapest neighborhood in San Bernardino for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Roosevelt and Pacific are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in San Bernardino?
The cheapest neighborhoods in San Bernardino are Carvedale, Roosevelt, Pacific, Sandin Hills, Curtis, Yerdemont, Muscoy, Terrace, Lankershim, and East Valley. We ranked all 49 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 Bernardino ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in San Bernardino?
Ridgeline lands at the expensive end of the 49 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
