Colorado cities compared
All 7 Colorado metropolitan areas on the same $100,000 salary and the same $400,000 home. Pueblo leaves you $10,597 a year better off than Denver — and none of it is income tax, which is identical everywhere in the state.
Pueblo to Denver: $10,597 a year apart, same tax code
Colorado has 7 metropolitan areas with a published price index, and on $100,000 with a $400,000 home they are not interchangeable: $80,049 of purchasing power in Pueblo against $69,452 in Denver — $10,597 a year, 10.6% of the salary, without leaving the state.
That gap is unusually easy to trust, because the income tax is identical in every row. Federal $13,170, FICA $7,650, Colorado state income tax $3,692, and no county or city in Colorado levies its own. Two things move down this table and only two: what a house costs in property tax, and what everything costs at the till.
| Metropolitan area | Buys | Behind the best | Prices | Property tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Pueblo | $80,049 | best | 91.762 | 0.51% |
| 2Grand Junction | $77,438 | −$2,611 | 95.476 | 0.39% |
| 3Greeley | $73,342 | −$6,707 | 100.176 | 0.50% |
| 4Colorado Springs | $73,334 | −$6,715 | 100.707 | 0.41% |
| 5Fort Collins-Loveland | $72,668 | −$7,381 | 101.128 | 0.50% |
| 6Boulder | $69,721 | −$10,328 | 105.202 | 0.54% |
| 7Denver-Aurora-Centennial | $69,452 | −$10,597 | 105.782 | 0.51% |
Purchasing power on a $100,000 salary with a $400,000 home: take-home after federal, FICA, Colorado income tax and property tax, divided by that area’s price level. The income tax is identical in every row — the whole of the spread is property tax and the price level. Price index 100 is the US average.
5 of the 7 price above the national average and 2 below it — inside one state, under one tax code. A single state-level cost of living number averages that away and tells you about none of them.
Property tax runs from 0.39% in Grand Junction to 0.54% in Boulder — on a $400,000 home that is $1,554 against $2,141 a year, a difference of $587. Each rate is that area's counties averaged and weighted by how many homes are in each, because a house pays the tax and a rural county of a few thousand homes should not weigh the same as an urban one of several hundred thousand.
The 21 Colorado comparisons, resolved
Every pair of Colorado cities, each on its own page with the full working, the break-even salary and the property tax bill house by house. Ordered by the population that could plausibly be choosing between them:
Colorado Springs vs Denver — Colorado Springs by $3,882 a year. Price level 100.707 against 105.782; property tax 0.41% against 0.51%.
Denver vs Fort Collins — Fort Collins by $3,216 a year. Price level 105.782 against 101.128; property tax 0.51% against 0.50%.
Denver vs Greeley — Greeley by $3,889 a year. Price level 105.782 against 100.176; property tax 0.51% against 0.50%.
Boulder vs Denver — Boulder by $268 a year. Price level 105.202 against 105.782; property tax 0.54% against 0.51%.
Denver vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $10,597 a year. Price level 105.782 against 91.762; property tax 0.51% against 0.51%.
Denver vs Grand Junction — Grand Junction by $7,986 a year. Price level 105.782 against 95.476; property tax 0.51% against 0.39%.
Colorado Springs vs Fort Collins — Colorado Springs by $666 a year. Price level 100.707 against 101.128; property tax 0.41% against 0.50%.
Colorado Springs vs Greeley — level on these numbers. Price level 100.707 against 100.176; property tax 0.41% against 0.50%.
Boulder vs Colorado Springs — Colorado Springs by $3,613 a year. Price level 105.202 against 100.707; property tax 0.54% against 0.41%.
Colorado Springs vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $6,715 a year. Price level 100.707 against 91.762; property tax 0.41% against 0.51%.
Colorado Springs vs Grand Junction — Grand Junction by $4,104 a year. Price level 100.707 against 95.476; property tax 0.41% against 0.39%.
Fort Collins vs Greeley — Greeley by $674 a year. Price level 101.128 against 100.176; property tax 0.50% against 0.50%.
Boulder vs Fort Collins — Fort Collins by $2,947 a year. Price level 105.202 against 101.128; property tax 0.54% against 0.50%.
Boulder vs Greeley — Greeley by $3,621 a year. Price level 105.202 against 100.176; property tax 0.54% against 0.50%.
Fort Collins vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $7,381 a year. Price level 101.128 against 91.762; property tax 0.50% against 0.51%.
Fort Collins vs Grand Junction — Grand Junction by $4,770 a year. Price level 101.128 against 95.476; property tax 0.50% against 0.39%.
Greeley vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $6,707 a year. Price level 100.176 against 91.762; property tax 0.50% against 0.51%.
Grand Junction vs Greeley — Grand Junction by $4,096 a year. Price level 95.476 against 100.176; property tax 0.39% against 0.50%.
Boulder vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $10,328 a year. Price level 105.202 against 91.762; property tax 0.54% against 0.51%.
Boulder vs Grand Junction — Grand Junction by $7,717 a year. Price level 105.202 against 95.476; property tax 0.54% against 0.39%.
Grand Junction vs Pueblo — Pueblo by $2,611 a year. Price level 95.476 against 91.762; property tax 0.39% against 0.51%.
Every Colorado city, and what it can be compared with
The areas themselves, largest first. Each line has what defines that city on the two measures that matter here, and then every comparison it takes part in:
Denver-Aurora-Centennial — 3.0m people across 10 counties. Price level 105.782, housing 146.919, property tax 0.51%. Compared with Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, Pueblo, Grand Junction.
Colorado Springs — 761k people across 2 counties. Price level 100.707, housing 116.207, property tax 0.41%. Compared with Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, Pueblo, Grand Junction.
Fort Collins-Loveland — 364k people across 1 county. Price level 101.128, housing 120.592, property tax 0.50%. Compared with Denver, Colorado Springs, Greeley, Boulder, Pueblo, Grand Junction.
Greeley — 341k people across 1 county. Price level 100.176, housing 112.599, property tax 0.50%. Compared with Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Boulder, Pueblo, Grand Junction.
Boulder — 328k people across 1 county. Price level 105.202, housing 157.02, property tax 0.54%. Compared with Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Pueblo, Grand Junction.
Pueblo — 169k people across 1 county. Price level 91.762, housing 71.285, property tax 0.51%. Compared with Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, Grand Junction.
Grand Junction — 157k people across 1 county. Price level 95.476, housing 86.367, property tax 0.39%. Compared with Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, Pueblo.
The counties behind each rate
Nobody pays a metropolitan area's property tax rate. They pay their county's, and the figures above are those county rates averaged and weighted by how many homes each county holds. Opened up:
Denver averages 0.51% across 10 counties: Denver County 0.44%, Arapahoe County 0.53%, Jefferson County 0.47%, Adams County 0.60%, Douglas County 0.55%, Broomfield County 0.62%, Park County 0.34%, Elbert County 0.45%, and 2 more. Inside the area the rate runs from 0.23% in Gilpin County to 0.62% in Broomfield County, which is $1,544 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
Colorado Springs averages 0.41% across 2 counties: El Paso County 0.41%, Teller County 0.36%. Inside the area the rate runs from 0.36% in Teller County to 0.41% in El Paso County, which is $223 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
Fort Collins averages 0.50% across 1 county: Larimer County 0.50%. One county, so the area rate is that county's rate exactly — no averaging involved.
Greeley averages 0.50% across 1 county: Weld County 0.50%. One county, so the area rate is that county's rate exactly — no averaging involved.
Boulder averages 0.54% across 1 county: Boulder County 0.54%. One county, so the area rate is that county's rate exactly — no averaging involved.
Pueblo averages 0.51% across 1 county: Pueblo County 0.51%. One county, so the area rate is that county's rate exactly — no averaging involved.
Grand Junction averages 0.39% across 1 county: Mesa County 0.39%. One county, so the area rate is that county's rate exactly — no averaging involved.
Which is the limitation of every figure on this page, stated rather than buried: an area rate is an average, and your address decides what you actually pay. The county pages linked above carry the rate, the assessment basis and the source for each one.
Where Colorado cities sit among the 380 in the country
A state ranking answers "where in Colorado". It does not answer whether Colorado is an expensive place to begin with, and the two questions have different answers often enough to be worth separating.
Against all 380 metropolitan areas the Bureau of Economic Analysis prices, Denver ranks 23 and Pueblo ranks 245, counting from the most expensive. The national median area sits at 93.492 — Monroe — so 6 of these 7 Colorado areas are dearer than the typical American metropolitan area and 1 are cheaper.
Denver is in the most expensive tenth of the country, which is worth knowing before reading its position in the state table as merely "the dear one".
The distinction matters for a specific reason. Everything on this page holds the income tax constant because these cities share a state; the moment a move crosses a state line that stops being true, and the comparison becomes the harder one — which is what Colorado against every other state is for.
The tax that is the same in all 7
Worth spelling out, because it is what makes the ranking above readable at all. On $100,000, in every one of these areas:
Federal income tax — $13,170. Set by Congress, identical everywhere in the United States.
Social Security and Medicare — $7,650. Also federal, and also flat across the country up to the Social Security ceiling.
Colorado income tax — $3,692. One set of brackets for the whole state, one standard deduction, applied identically in every city on this page.
Local income tax — $0. Colorado does not permit counties, cities or school districts to levy their own. That is not a modelling shortcut, it is the law, and it is the condition on which these pages get published: in the eleven states that do permit it, the levying jurisdictions do not line up with metropolitan areas and no honest rate can be assigned.
Which leaves property tax as the only tax in the whole comparison that moves — from $1,554 to $2,141 a year on the same $400,000 home — and the price level as the only other thing. Two variables, both measured, both sourced. It is as clean as a cost-of-living comparison gets.
Pueblo stays on top whether you rent or buy
A ranking built on one salary and one house value is worth exactly as much as its assumptions, so here are the same 7 areas resolved again with those assumptions changed.
Renting, with no property tax at all: Pueblo still leads, by $10,903 over Denver. The order does not depend on owning a house.
On $60,000 instead of $100,000: Pueblo still leads. The gap narrows to $6,692 — smaller in dollars, but a larger share of a smaller salary.
On $250,000: Pueblo still leads, and by $24,665 — the spread widens with income, because the price level applies to everything you have left after tax.
This is the same discipline applied to a single published figure elsewhere on this site: a number without its range is half a number. Every page linked above lets you set your own salary, your own house and your own horizon, and recomputes the whole comparison rather than scaling it.
How this is worked out, and what it does not claim
Every row is the same calculation: gross salary in, federal income tax and FICA out, Colorado income tax out, property tax on a $400,000 home out — then what is left divided by that area's price level, so the figure is what the money buys rather than what the payslip says.
The price index is the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity, 2024, published per metropolitan area with a documented method and broken into housing, goods, utilities and services. Which counties make up each area comes from the Census Bureau delineation file, joined by CBSA code and never by name — there are thirty "Washington County" in the United States and a join on names would have failed silently.
US Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities by State and Metro Area, 2024 (released 19 February 2026) — read 2026-09-10. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area
US Census Bureau — Core Based Statistical Areas delineation file, 2023 (which counties form each metropolitan area) — read 2026-09-10. https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/demo/metro-micro/delineation-files.html
US Census Bureau, American Community Survey — county effective property tax rates and housing units — read 2026-08-31. https://data.census.gov/
What it does not claim: that the city at the top is the better place to live. This measures what a salary buys. Schools, the commute, the weather and how far you are from your family are not in it, and on a move inside one state they are usually what actually decides it.
It also assumes one salary, one house value and a buyer rather than a renter. Every page linked above lets you change all three, and the answer moves with them — on some pairs enough to change which city comes out ahead.
Where to go next
Questions
- Which city in Colorado leaves you best off?
- Pueblo, at $80,049 of purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home — $10,597 a year more than Denver at the other end of the table. Because the income tax is identical everywhere in Colorado, that ranking is made of two things only: the price level and property tax.
- Which is the cheapest city in Colorado?
- Pueblo, at 91.762 on the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index where 100 is the US average, against 105.782 in Denver. Cheapest is not the same as best off, though: property tax is set separately and can move a household by $14 a year on the same house.
- Does income tax differ between cities in Colorado?
- No. Colorado sets one set of brackets for the whole state, and it does not let counties or cities levy their own income tax. On $100,000 the bill is federal $13,170, FICA $7,650 and state $3,692 in every one of these 7 areas. That is what makes comparing them clean.
- How much does cost of living vary inside Colorado?
- From 91.762 to 105.782 on the price index — 14.0 points between Pueblo and Denver. In take-home terms that is $10,597 a year of purchasing power on the same salary.
- How many Colorado city comparisons are there?
- 21, one page each, every pair of the 7 metropolitan areas the Bureau of Economic Analysis prices in Colorado. Each resolves the same way — income tax, property tax and price level — and each shows the break-even salary in both directions.