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 St. Louis might be more expensive than living in rural Missouri, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those St. Louis 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 St. Louis are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
76 cost of living index
75 cost of living index
81 cost of living index
97 cost of living index
76 cost of living index
90 cost of living index
79 cost of living index
78 cost of living index
90 cost of living index
81 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Missouri’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest St. Louis hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in St. Louis, 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 77 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 St. Louis.” We’re lookin’ at you, Kingsway East.
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 St. Louis for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kingsway East | 76 |
| 2 | Kingsway West | 75 |
| 3 | North Point | 81 |
| 4 | Oarondelet Park | 97 |
| 5 | The Ville | 76 |
| 5 | Franz Park | 90 |
| 7 | Wells-Goodfellow | 79 |
| 8 | Hyde Park | 78 |
| 9 | Princeton Heights | 90 |
| 9 | Walnut Park West | 81 |
| 11 | Fairground Park | 77 |
| 12 | Holly Hills | 91 |
| 13 | Penrose | 80 |
| 14 | College Hill | 79 |
| 15 | Gravois Park | 83 |
| 15 | Near North Riverfront | 81 |
| 17 | Walnut Park East | 78 |
| 18 | Marine Villa | 84 |
| 19 | Ellendale | 91 |
| 20 | Carondelet | 85 |
| 21 | Clayton-Tamm | 91 |
| 22 | Tower Grove South | 92 |
| 23 | Fairground Neighborhood | 78 |
| 24 | The Greater Ville | 79 |
| 24 | Bevo Mill | 86 |
| 26 | Mark Twain | 81 |
| 27 | Hi-Pointe | 94 |
| 28 | Lindenwood Park | 94 |
| 29 | Covenant Blu-Grand Center | 82 |
| 30 | Fox Park | 94 |
| 31 | Baden | 81 |
| 32 | The Gate District | 99 |
| 33 | Boulevard Heights | 91 |
| 34 | Dutchtown | 84 |
| 35 | Clifton Heights | 94 |
| 35 | Calvary-Bellefontaine Cemetery | 80 |
| 37 | Mount Pleasant | 80 |
| 38 | Peabody-Darst-Webbe | 92 |
| 39 | North Hampton | 93 |
| 40 | Hamilton Heights | 77 |
| 41 | Vandeventer | 89 |
| 42 | Patch | 83 |
| 43 | South Hampton | 97 |
| 44 | Jeffvanderlou | 82 |
| 45 | Debaliviere Place | 98 |
| 46 | Missouri Botanical Garden | 108 |
| 47 | Academy | 82 |
| 48 | Lewis Place | 89 |
| 49 | Southwest Garden | 95 |
| 49 | Saint Louis Hills | 100 |
| 51 | Downtown | 100 |
| 51 | North Riverfront | 81 |
| 53 | Botanical Heights | 93 |
| 54 | Benton Park | 100 |
| 55 | Shaw | 107 |
| 55 | Wydown-Skinker | 124 |
| 57 | Soulard | 99 |
| 58 | Tower Grove East | 98 |
| 59 | The Hill | 95 |
| 59 | Old North Saint Louis | 84 |
| 61 | West End | 91 |
| 62 | Lafayette Square | 101 |
| 63 | Compton Heights | 110 |
| 64 | McKinley Heights | 100 |
| 65 | Saint Louis Place | 82 |
| 66 | Benton Park West | 94 |
| 67 | Visitation Park | 89 |
| 67 | La Salle | 96 |
| 69 | Kosciusko | 99 |
| 70 | Kings Oak | 97 |
| 70 | Fountain Park | 84 |
| 70 | Cheltenham | 97 |
| 73 | Downtown West | 101 |
| 74 | Skinker-Debaliviere | 112 |
| 75 | Forest Park Southeast | 102 |
| 76 | Central West End | 117 |
| 77 | Midtown | 99 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 77 St. Louis neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in St. Louis
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in St. Louis where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in St. Louis are Kingsway East, Kingsway West, North Point, Oarondelet Park, The Ville, Franz Park, Wells-Goodfellow, Hyde Park, Princeton Heights, and Walnut Park West.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in St. Louis aren’t all cheap. Midtown takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in St. Louis.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Missouri? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In St. Louis FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in St. Louis?
Kingsway East is the cheapest neighborhood in St. Louis for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Kingsway West and North Point are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in St. Louis?
The cheapest neighborhoods in St. Louis are Kingsway East, Kingsway West, North Point, Oarondelet Park, The Ville, Franz Park, Wells-Goodfellow, Hyde Park, Princeton Heights, and Walnut Park West. We ranked all 77 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 St. Louis ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in St. Louis?
Midtown lands at the expensive end of the 77 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
