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 Jose might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those San Jose 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 Jose are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
200 cost of living index
211 cost of living index
152 cost of living index
243 cost of living index
202 cost of living index
185 cost of living index
176 cost of living index
198 cost of living index
226 cost of living index
180 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 Jose hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in San Jose, 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 18 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 Jose.” We’re lookin’ at you, North San Jose.
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 Jose for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | North San Jose | 200 |
| 2 | Evergreen | 211 |
| 3 | Edenvale-Seven Trees | 152 |
| 4 | Almaden Valley | 243 |
| 4 | Santa Teresa | 202 |
| 4 | North Valley | 185 |
| 7 | East San Jose | 176 |
| 8 | Blossom Valley | 198 |
| 9 | Willow Glen | 226 |
| 9 | Alum Rock-East Foothills | 180 |
| 11 | Fairgrounds | 162 |
| 12 | Berryessa | 217 |
| 12 | Rose Garden | 223 |
| 14 | Downtown | 198 |
| 15 | Cambrian Park | 237 |
| 16 | Buena Vista | 142 |
| 17 | West San Jose | 254 |
| 17 | Burbank | 159 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 18 San Jose neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in San Jose
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in San Jose where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in San Jose are North San Jose, Evergreen, Edenvale-Seven Trees, Almaden Valley, Santa Teresa, North Valley, East San Jose, Blossom Valley, Willow Glen, and Alum Rock-East Foothills.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in San Jose aren’t all cheap. Burbank takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in San Jose.
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 Jose FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in San Jose?
North San Jose is the cheapest neighborhood in San Jose for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Evergreen and Edenvale-Seven Trees are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in San Jose?
The cheapest neighborhoods in San Jose are North San Jose, Evergreen, Edenvale-Seven Trees, Almaden Valley, Santa Teresa, North Valley, East San Jose, Blossom Valley, Willow Glen, and Alum Rock-East Foothills. We ranked all 18 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 Jose ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in San Jose?
Burbank lands at the expensive end of the 18 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
