North Dakota cities compared
All 4 North Dakota metropolitan areas on the same $100,000 salary and the same $400,000 home. Grand Forks leaves you $4,400 a year better off than Fargo — and none of it is income tax, which is identical everywhere in the state.
Grand Forks to Fargo: $4,400 a year apart, same tax code
North Dakota has 4 metropolitan areas with a published price index, and on $100,000 with a $400,000 home they are not interchangeable: $85,543 of purchasing power in Grand Forks against $81,143 in Fargo — $4,400 a year, 4.4% 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, North Dakota state income tax $691, and no county or city in North Dakota 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Grand Forks | $85,543 | best | 86.663 | 1.09% |
| 2Minot | $85,460 | −$83 | 87.028 | 1.03% |
| 3Bismarck | $82,219 | −$3,324 | 91.024 | 0.91% |
| 4Fargo | $81,143 | −$4,400 | 90.871 | 1.19% |
Purchasing power on a $100,000 salary with a $400,000 home: take-home after federal, FICA, North Dakota 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.
Every one of these areas prices below the national average.
Property tax runs from 0.91% in Bismarck to 1.19% in Fargo — on a $400,000 home that is $3,650 against $4,754 a year, a difference of $1,104. 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 6 North Dakota comparisons, resolved
Every pair of North Dakota 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:
Bismarck vs Fargo — Bismarck by $1,076 a year. Price level 91.024 against 90.871; property tax 0.91% against 1.19%.
Fargo vs Grand Forks — Grand Forks by $4,400 a year. Price level 90.871 against 86.663; property tax 1.19% against 1.09%.
Fargo vs Minot — Minot by $4,318 a year. Price level 90.871 against 87.028; property tax 1.19% against 1.03%.
Bismarck vs Grand Forks — Grand Forks by $3,324 a year. Price level 91.024 against 86.663; property tax 0.91% against 1.09%.
Bismarck vs Minot — Minot by $3,242 a year. Price level 91.024 against 87.028; property tax 0.91% against 1.03%.
Grand Forks vs Minot — Grand Forks by $83 a year. Price level 86.663 against 87.028; property tax 1.09% against 1.03%.
Every North Dakota 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:
Fargo — 255k people across 2 counties. Price level 90.871, housing 81.142, property tax 1.19%. Compared with Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot.
Bismarck — 134k people across 3 counties. Price level 91.024, housing 84.013, property tax 0.91%. Compared with Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot.
Grand Forks — 104k people across 2 counties. Price level 86.663, housing 59.664, property tax 1.09%. Compared with Fargo, Bismarck, Minot.
Minot — 77k people across 3 counties. Price level 87.028, housing 63.234, property tax 1.03%. Compared with Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks.
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:
Fargo averages 1.19% across 2 counties: Cass County 1.21%, Clay County 1.11%. Inside the area the rate runs from 1.11% in Clay County to 1.21% in Cass County, which is $387 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
Bismarck averages 0.91% across 3 counties: Burleigh County 0.88%, Morton County 1.03%, Oliver County 0.63%. Inside the area the rate runs from 0.63% in Oliver County to 1.03% in Morton County, which is $1,593 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
Grand Forks averages 1.09% across 2 counties: Grand Forks County 1.13%, Polk County 1.00%. Inside the area the rate runs from 1.00% in Polk County to 1.13% in Grand Forks County, which is $515 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
Minot averages 1.03% across 3 counties: Ward County 1.07%, McHenry County 0.66%, Renville County 0.68%. Inside the area the rate runs from 0.66% in McHenry County to 1.07% in Ward County, which is $1,649 a year on a $400,000 home — a real spread inside a single labour market.
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 North Dakota cities sit among the 380 in the country
A state ranking answers "where in North Dakota". It does not answer whether North Dakota 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, Bismarck ranks 262 and Grand Forks ranks 351, counting from the most expensive. The national median area sits at 93.492 — Monroe — so 0 of these 4 North Dakota areas are dearer than the typical American metropolitan area and 4 are cheaper.
Grand Forks is in the cheapest tenth of the country, so the bottom of this state's table is genuinely cheap and not just cheap relative to its neighbours.
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 North Dakota against every other state is for.
The tax that is the same in all 4
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.
North Dakota income tax — $691. One set of brackets for the whole state, one standard deduction, applied identically in every city on this page.
Local income tax — $0. North Dakota 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 $3,650 to $4,754 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.
The top of this table changes depending on whether you buy
A ranking built on one salary and one house value is worth exactly as much as its assumptions, so here are the same 4 areas resolved again with those assumptions changed.
Renting, with no property tax at all: Grand Forks still leads, by $4,339 over Bismarck. The order does not depend on owning a house.
On $60,000 instead of $100,000: Minot leads instead. At a lower salary the fixed property tax bill weighs much more heavily as a share of what you have, and it reorders the table.
On $250,000: Grand Forks still leads, and by $9,801 — 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, North Dakota 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 North Dakota leaves you best off?
- Grand Forks, at $85,543 of purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home — $4,400 a year more than Fargo at the other end of the table. Because the income tax is identical everywhere in North Dakota, that ranking is made of two things only: the price level and property tax.
- Which is the cheapest city in North Dakota?
- Grand Forks, at 86.663 on the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index where 100 is the US average, against 91.024 in Bismarck. Cheapest is not the same as best off, though: property tax is set separately and can move a household by $705 a year on the same house.
- Does income tax differ between cities in North Dakota?
- No. North Dakota 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 $691 in every one of these 4 areas. That is what makes comparing them clean.
- How much does cost of living vary inside North Dakota?
- From 86.663 to 91.024 on the price index — 4.4 points between Grand Forks and Bismarck. In take-home terms that is $4,400 a year of purchasing power on the same salary.
- How many North Dakota city comparisons are there?
- 6, one page each, every pair of the 4 metropolitan areas the Bureau of Economic Analysis prices in North Dakota. Each resolves the same way — income tax, property tax and price level — and each shows the break-even salary in both directions.