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 Springfield might be more expensive than living in rural Massachusetts, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Springfield 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 Springfield are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
101 cost of living index
99 cost of living index
103 cost of living index
102 cost of living index
105 cost of living index
103 cost of living index
108 cost of living index
95 cost of living index
98 cost of living index
104 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Massachusetts’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Springfield hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Springfield, 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 17 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 Springfield.” We’re lookin’ at you, Boston Road.
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 Springfield for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boston Road | 101 |
| 2 | Pine Point | 99 |
| 3 | Liberty Heights | 103 |
| 4 | East Springfield | 102 |
| 5 | Sixteen Acres | 105 |
| 6 | Indian Orchard | 103 |
| 7 | East Forest Park | 108 |
| 7 | Memorial Square | 95 |
| 9 | Bay | 98 |
| 10 | Forest Park | 104 |
| 11 | Brightwood | 96 |
| 11 | Metro Center | 96 |
| 13 | McKnight | 103 |
| 14 | Old Hill | 100 |
| 15 | Maple High-Six Corners | 102 |
| 16 | Upper Hill | 110 |
| 17 | South End | 105 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 17 Springfield neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Springfield
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Springfield where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Springfield are Boston Road, Pine Point, Liberty Heights, East Springfield, Sixteen Acres, Indian Orchard, East Forest Park, Memorial Square, Bay, and Forest Park.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Springfield aren’t all cheap. South End takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Springfield.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Massachusetts? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Springfield FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Springfield?
Boston Road is the cheapest neighborhood in Springfield for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Pine Point and Liberty Heights are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Springfield?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Springfield are Boston Road, Pine Point, Liberty Heights, East Springfield, Sixteen Acres, Indian Orchard, East Forest Park, Memorial Square, Bay, and Forest Park. We ranked all 17 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 Springfield ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Springfield?
South End lands at the expensive end of the 17 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
