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 Diego might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those San Diego 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 Diego are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
115 cost of living index
129 cost of living index
151 cost of living index
126 cost of living index
126 cost of living index
144 cost of living index
123 cost of living index
161 cost of living index
167 cost of living index
Located in
San Diego County, CaliforniaSan Carlos is a city in San Mateo County, California on the San Francisco Peninsula, about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. It is a small residential suburb located between Belmont and Redwood City. The population is 28,406 per the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
133 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 Diego hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in San Diego, 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 85 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 Diego.” We’re lookin’ at you, Palm City.
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 Diego for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palm City | 115 |
| 2 | Bay Terrace | 129 |
| 3 | Gaslamp Quarter | 151 |
| 4 | Webster | 126 |
| 5 | Sky Line | 126 |
| 6 | Columbia | 144 |
| 7 | Midtown District | 123 |
| 8 | Torrey Pines | 161 |
| 9 | San Carlos | 167 |
| 10 | Gateway | 133 |
| 11 | Mission Valley | 130 |
| 12 | Darnall | 129 |
| 13 | Core | 101 |
| 13 | City Heights East | 107 |
| 15 | Mission Bay | 136 |
| 16 | Clairemont Mesa | 143 |
| 17 | Rancho Bernadino | 159 |
| 18 | Del Cerro | 186 |
| 19 | Miramar | 153 |
| 20 | Kearny Mesa | 158 |
| 21 | Mira Mesa | 163 |
| 22 | El Cerritos | 128 |
| 22 | North Hills | 141 |
| 24 | Paradise Hills | 149 |
| 25 | Kensington | 177 |
| 26 | San Ysidro | 137 |
| 26 | Grantville | 145 |
| 28 | Alta Vista | 151 |
| 29 | Bario Logan | 109 |
| 30 | Rancho Penasquitos | 193 |
| 31 | Nestor | 131 |
| 32 | La Jolla Village | 141 |
| 33 | West University Heights | 146 |
| 33 | Lake Murray | 164 |
| 33 | Valencia Park | 133 |
| 36 | Oak Park | 138 |
| 37 | Sabre Springs | 186 |
| 38 | Allied Gardens | 164 |
| 38 | Encanto | 147 |
| 40 | Carmel Valley | 223 |
| 41 | Bay Ho | 177 |
| 41 | Jomacha-Lomita | 148 |
| 43 | South Park | 178 |
| 44 | North Clairemont | 168 |
| 45 | Moreno Mission | 136 |
| 46 | Normal Heights | 149 |
| 46 | Chollas View | 128 |
| 48 | Scripps Ranch | 196 |
| 48 | North City | 241 |
| 50 | City Heights West | 119 |
| 51 | Balboa Park | 163 |
| 52 | Roseville | 179 |
| 53 | Marina | 181 |
| 54 | Talmadge | 164 |
| 55 | Tierrasanta | 176 |
| 56 | Emerald Hills | 142 |
| 57 | College Area | 142 |
| 58 | Southcrest | 133 |
| 59 | Sorrento Valley | 197 |
| 60 | Mount Hope | 123 |
| 61 | Bay Park | 179 |
| 62 | Egger Highlands | 144 |
| 63 | University City | 175 |
| 63 | Del Mar Heights | 253 |
| 65 | Carmel Mountain | 185 |
| 66 | Loma Portal | 195 |
| 67 | Little Italy | 171 |
| 68 | Lincoln Park | 129 |
| 69 | Bird Land | 159 |
| 70 | Memorial | 124 |
| 71 | Cortez Hill | 159 |
| 72 | Park West | 178 |
| 73 | Serra Mesa | 166 |
| 74 | Mountain View | 136 |
| 75 | La Jolla | 250 |
| 76 | Pacific Beach | 205 |
| 77 | Midtown | 184 |
| 78 | Old Town | 203 |
| 79 | Grant Hill | 148 |
| 80 | East Village | 155 |
| 81 | Wooded Area | 237 |
| 82 | Linda Vista | 162 |
| 83 | Ocean Beach | 204 |
| 84 | Rolando | 159 |
| 85 | Horton Plaza | 208 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 85 San Diego neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in San Diego
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in San Diego where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in San Diego are Palm City, Bay Terrace, Gaslamp Quarter, Webster, Sky Line, Columbia, Midtown District, Torrey Pines, San Carlos, and Gateway.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in San Diego aren’t all cheap. Horton Plaza takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in San Diego.
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 Diego FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in San Diego?
Palm City is the cheapest neighborhood in San Diego for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Bay Terrace and Gaslamp Quarter are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in San Diego?
The cheapest neighborhoods in San Diego are Palm City, Bay Terrace, Gaslamp Quarter, Webster, Sky Line, Columbia, Midtown District, Torrey Pines, San Carlos, and Gateway. We ranked all 85 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 Diego ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in San Diego?
Horton Plaza lands at the expensive end of the 85 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
