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 Wichita might be more expensive than living in rural Kansas, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Wichita 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 Wichita are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
83 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
77 cost of living index
90 cost of living index
84 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
78 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Kansas’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Wichita hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Wichita, 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 69 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 Wichita.” We’re lookin’ at you, South Area.
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 Wichita for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Area | 83 |
| 2 | Orchard Breeze | 85 |
| 3 | Hilltop | 77 |
| 4 | Macdonald | 90 |
| 4 | South Central Improvemen | 84 |
| 6 | Meadowlark | 88 |
| 7 | Pleasant Valley | 93 |
| 7 | Sherwood Glen | 93 |
| 7 | Oakview | 78 |
| 7 | East Mt Vernon Na | 85 |
| 11 | Southwest Village | 87 |
| 12 | Jones Park | 82 |
| 13 | Pueblo | 85 |
| 14 | Planeview United | 81 |
| 15 | Stanley-Aley | 85 |
| 16 | Matlock Heights | 81 |
| 17 | Longview | 87 |
| 17 | Southwest | 86 |
| 19 | South City Community | 84 |
| 20 | K-15 | 86 |
| 21 | Power | 82 |
| 21 | Riverside | 87 |
| 23 | Orchard Park | 89 |
| 24 | Sunnyside | 85 |
| 25 | Courtland | 99 |
| 26 | Ken-Mar | 85 |
| 27 | Linwood | 84 |
| 28 | Indian Hills Riverbend | 89 |
| 29 | Sunflower | 85 |
| 30 | McCormick | 83 |
| 31 | North Riverside | 88 |
| 32 | Hilltop-Jefferson | 90 |
| 33 | Central 2000 | 82 |
| 33 | McAdams | 82 |
| 35 | Rockhurst | 100 |
| 36 | Village | 93 |
| 37 | East Front | 86 |
| 38 | Kellogg School | 83 |
| 38 | Historic Midtown | 85 |
| 40 | Park Meadows | 101 |
| 41 | Crown Heights South | 97 |
| 42 | New Salem | 83 |
| 43 | Delano | 88 |
| 44 | Northeast Millair | 88 |
| 45 | College Hill | 101 |
| 46 | Fairmount | 83 |
| 47 | Benjamin Hills | 93 |
| 48 | Mead | 87 |
| 49 | Crown Heights | 95 |
| 50 | Eastridge | 87 |
| 51 | Murdock | 84 |
| 51 | The Elm | 84 |
| 53 | Country Overlook | 88 |
| 54 | Northwest Big River | 90 |
| 55 | Uptown | 87 |
| 55 | Sleepy Hollow | 96 |
| 57 | Indian Hills | 89 |
| 58 | Schweiter East | 86 |
| 59 | Fabrique | 88 |
| 60 | La Placita Park | 90 |
| 61 | North Central | 85 |
| 62 | Northeast Heights | 96 |
| 63 | Harrison Park Rk | 99 |
| 64 | Schweiter | 89 |
| 65 | Brookhollow | 101 |
| 66 | Chisholm Creek | 95 |
| 67 | Cottonwood Village | 93 |
| 68 | Grandview Heights | 90 |
| 69 | Comotara Mainsgate Villa | 97 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 69 Wichita neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Wichita
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Wichita where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Wichita are South Area, Orchard Breeze, Hilltop, Macdonald, South Central Improvemen, Meadowlark, Pleasant Valley, Sherwood Glen, Oakview, and East Mt Vernon Na.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Wichita aren’t all cheap. Comotara Mainsgate Villa takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Wichita.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Kansas? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Wichita FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Wichita?
South Area is the cheapest neighborhood in Wichita for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Orchard Breeze and Hilltop are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Wichita?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Wichita are South Area, Orchard Breeze, Hilltop, Macdonald, South Central Improvemen, Meadowlark, Pleasant Valley, Sherwood Glen, Oakview, and East Mt Vernon Na. We ranked all 69 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 Wichita ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Wichita?
Comotara Mainsgate Villa lands at the expensive end of the 69 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
