Colorado Springs vs Denver: What the Numbers Actually Say

Almost every version of this comparison you will find online stops at the median home price, declares Colorado Springs cheaper, and moves on. That answer is incomplete in a way that costs people money.

I'm Leah Behr, a REALTOR® with the Behr & Behr Team in Colorado Springs, and I get this question from Denver buyers most months of the year. Here is the version I give clients, and the one number that changes the whole conclusion depending on where your paycheck comes from.

The comparison table, with sources

Sources: Pikes Peak REALTOR® Services Corp. and Denver Metro Association of REALTORS®, June 2026; C2ER Cost of Living Index published March 2026; Bureau of Labor Statistics Area Economic Summaries; Census ACS 2024 one-year estimates; NOAA climate normals 1991–2020.

The housing gap is real, and it is about $116,000

Denver metro's median of $616,000 against El Paso County's $499,999 is a difference of $116,001. Round it to $116,000 and you have the number that drives most of these conversations.

That gap is genuine and it is large. On a 30-year loan it is the difference between two very different monthly payments. If you are bringing income with you, it is close to the whole argument.

But notice what else is in that table.

The number nobody puts next to the home price

Denver's average weekly wage is $1,826 against our $1,421. That is roughly 28% more ($1,826 ÷ $1,421 = 1.285), while Denver's overall cost of living runs about 9 percentage points higher than ours, at +10% versus +1% against the national average.

Costs up 9. Pay up 28. Run that out and the local buying power in Denver comes out slightly ahead, not behind. Numbeo's purchasing-power index puts Denver only 2.8% below Colorado Springs, which is close enough to a tie that I would not build a relocation around it.

So the honest answer to "is Colorado Springs cheaper than Denver" is: it depends entirely on whether your income moves with you. Bring a Denver or out-of-state salary here and you have captured a real, permanent discount. Take a local job here instead of a local job there and most of the savings you were counting on quietly disappear into a smaller paycheck.

I have watched both versions play out. The remote-income households are almost always glad they came. The households that assumed the cheaper house also came with a comparable salary are the ones who feel squeezed in year two.

Where each city is actually cheaper

The overall index hides the fact that the two cities are cheaper in different places.

Healthcare is the widest gap in the table

Colorado Springs runs 4% below the national average on healthcare. Denver runs 19% above it. That is a 23-point spread, wider than the housing gap in percentage terms, and it compounds every year for a household with ongoing medical needs.

The caveat I always add: cost and access are different questions. Local reporting has documented physician shortages and long waits in some specialties here. If you have a condition that needs a specific specialist, check availability in that specialty before you move, not after.

Snow is where the reputation is backwards

Denver averages 49.0 inches of snow a year. We average 32.5. People routinely assume the city closer to the mountains gets buried more, and it is the other way around.

Commutes are close to a wash

Mean commute times are 23.3 minutes here and 24.9 in Denver, a minute and a half apart. Averages flatten the thing that actually matters, though, which is that a bad commute here is usually a specific corridor rather than a systemic problem. If you are weighing the east side, drive it at 7:45 on a weekday before you commit. I go through which parts of town that applies to in the neighborhood guide.

Where the numbers disagree with each other

Two cost categories I will not give you a clean answer on, because the sources conflict. C2ER puts Colorado Springs utilities well below the national average, while Numbeo's user-reported apartment utility bills come out higher here than in Denver. Groceries show a similar split. The two use different baskets and different methods. Anyone who quotes you a confident single figure on Springs-versus-Denver utilities is picking whichever source flatters their argument.

Water: the comparison that will matter more each year

This is the one category where Colorado Springs has a structural advantage over Denver, and almost nobody puts it in a comparison post.

2026 brought record-low mountain snowpack with an early melt. Denver Water went to Stage 1 restrictions in late March, with drought surcharges running roughly $7 to $76 a month depending on use. Colorado Springs Utilities did not impose drought surcharges at all this year, because reservoir storage here holds roughly three years' worth of water, comfortably above the roughly 1.5-year threshold that triggers surcharges (The Colorado Sun, April 2026).

That is not luck. It is the result of a century of buying and building water rights, including the Southern Delivery System. It does not make watering a free-for-all here. Outdoor watering is limited to three days a week with no watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and you should check the utility's own page for current rules before you plant anything. But in a drying region, the household that is not getting a surcharge letter in a bad snowpack year is in a materially better position.

Which one is actually growing

The internet will tell you everyone is leaving Colorado. The real picture is more specific than that.

Colorado Springs added 2,288 residents in the year ending July 2025, the largest one-year numeric gain of any city in Colorado, bringing the city to about 494,743. El Paso County added 4,684 and remains the state's most populous county at roughly 757,000 (Census Vintage 2025, via the Colorado State Demography Office).

At the same time, Colorado as a whole lost residents to other states for the first time in two decades, with 12,100 more people leaving for other states than arriving. Our own net migration is down about 29% from its 2015 pace (Colorado Politics, citing the State Demographer's Office).

Both things are true. Growth here is real but slower than it was, and it is now driven more by births and international migration than by Americans relocating in. For a buyer, slower in-migration is not a bad thing. It is part of why sellers are cutting price and why you have negotiating room that did not exist three years ago.

The job market question underneath all of this

Since the whole comparison turns on where your income comes from, the local job market matters more than the price table.

Colorado Springs nonfarm employment fell by about 1,300 jobs, roughly 0.4%, in the twelve months to May 2026. Information was down 11.8%, trade and transport down 4.8%, construction down 4.8%, manufacturing down 2.8%. Financial activities grew 5.3%. Denver lost about 9,400 jobs over the same period (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Both metros softened. Ours is smaller, so a smaller absolute loss is a larger share of the base, and a smaller market also means fewer employers competing for you in any given specialty. Unemployment is nearly identical at 3.8% here and 3.9% there, which tells you the labor market is tight in both places but says nothing about depth.

The practical read: run your specific field's local numbers before you commit, in whichever city you are considering. A citywide unemployment rate will not tell you whether there are three employers in your specialty or thirty.

What I would tell a friend deciding between them

Colorado Springs is the better answer if you bring your income, want more house and more land for the money, will actually use the outdoors, and can live with driving for most things.

Denver is the better answer if you need a deep specialist job market, want genuine walkability and transit, or your work requires being physically close to a larger business community. Paying more to earn proportionally more is a rational trade if the career upside is real.

What I would not do is choose based on the median price alone. That single number is the most quoted and least complete fact in this entire comparison.

Common questions

Is it cheaper to live in Colorado Springs or Denver?

Cheaper on paper: the median home is about $116,000 less and overall costs run roughly 9 percentage points lower. Cheaper in practice depends on your income. Denver's average weekly wage is about 28% higher, so a household earning locally in each city ends up with close to the same buying power. The discount is real for people bringing outside income and much smaller for people changing jobs.

Is Colorado Springs a suburb of Denver?

No. It is about 70 miles south, has its own metropolitan statistical area, its own airport, its own employment base built heavily around military and aerospace, and its own housing market that does not track Denver's month to month. Some people do commute between them, but that is a long drive to make daily.

Does Colorado Springs get less snow than Denver?

Yes, and by a wide margin. Colorado Springs averages 32.5 inches a year against Denver's 49.0, per NOAA's 1991–2020 climate normals. Our snow also tends not to linger, because every month of the year here averages a daytime high above freezing.

Which city has better healthcare costs?

Colorado Springs, clearly. Healthcare here runs about 4% below the national average while Denver runs about 19% above it. Access is a separate question from cost, and worth checking for your specific specialty in either city.

Should I move to Colorado Springs if I work remotely?

This is the scenario the numbers favor most strongly. Remote or out-of-state income paired with Colorado Springs costs is where the gap becomes a real and durable advantage, because you get the lower cost base without accepting the lower local wage. The full cost picture is in the honest guide to moving here.

If you are weighing the two

Spend a weekday in each, not a weekend. Drive the commute you would actually drive, at the hour you would actually drive it. Price insurance on a specific address rather than assuming a state average, because hail drives a large share of the premium along the whole Front Range.

And be honest with yourself about the income question, because it is the one that decides this. Everything else in the comparison is a preference. That one is arithmetic. If you want a sense of the day-to-day texture rather than the spreadsheet, I wrote what it is really like to live here separately.

Leah Behr is a licensed REALTOR® with the Behr & Behr Team in Colorado Springs. She has lived in the city since 2009 and works with buyers relocating from Denver and the northern Front Range every year. If you want the numbers run against your own income and commute, reach out to our team.

Behr & Behr Team is committed to Equal Housing Opportunity. All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed and should be independently verified.