It’s no secret that a heap of Americans are looking to expatriate in 2025. One of the key considerations for any hopeful Mexpat (besides meeting the financial qualifications for residency) is … How much does it cost to live in Mexico right now?
Below I’ll take a closer look at this question with a focus on four popular expat destinations: Mexico City (or CDMX as it’s known to locals), Guadalajara, San Miguel de Allende, and Puerto Vallarta.
I’ve chosen to highlight these four cities based on the quality of crowd-sourced data from Numbeo, a website dedicated to cost-of-living comparisons. Besides the data volume (hundreds of data points from actual residents), these cities have received frequent updates through early 2025, which is key to accuracy given the high inflation rates Mexico has experienced in recent years. Regarding Guadalajara, I will also provide insights based on my own experience living here for the past 3 years.
Because this is a blog and not a book, I’ve limited the comparisons to core items in every household budget, i.e. housing, food, utilities, and transportation. This analysis is not meant to be comprehensive, so please keep that in mind as you take it all in.
The point is to provide aspiring expats (and those already here who may be considering a move within Mexico) with a baseline understanding of what it costs to live in some of the most popular Mexican cities right now.
Let’s dive in.
Housing
Housing options in Mexico come in many shapes and sizes. For simplicity’s sake, the table below compares the average reported rental cost of a 3-bedroom apartment in the city center of each location, with the cheapest option indexed to 100.
An important callout for this comparison that puts Guadalajara in a very favorable light is the relative desirability and housing in each city center. Having spent time in all of them, I’d argue that living in Guadalajara’s city center (or PV’s) is much less desirable than it is in CDMX or San Miguel de Allende.
Unlike those two cities with opulent architecture, quaint streets, top restaurants, and fabulous parks in their city centers, Guadalajara’s (while historic) is dominated by more humble housing stock (think modest 1-2 story homes with unremarkable architecture, and cookie cutter apartment towers). It’s also devoid of large parks and top-tier amenities, which tend to cluster west of the centro and into Zapopan.
As such, it’s logical that average rents are lower in Guadalajara’s centro than in the other cities covered here. In a similar vein, Puerto Vallarta’s city center would not be considered desirable (those in the know consider Conchas Chinas and Marina Vallarta more upscale with better amenities). This makes Vallarta centro’s near price parity with CDMX and San Miguel city centers all the more shocking.
According to a study conducted by Numbeo in 2024, Puerto Vallarta ranked #1 for the most expensive rental housing in all of Mexico when all housing types were considered, with Mexico City a close second. All of that said, your housing budget does go further in Guadalajara relative to the other cities, at least for now.
Food
The sample food basket below isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but a starting point for comparing the cost of domestic grocery staples across the four cities.
There are two good things about food shopping in Mexico. First, the cost of food staples is shockingly cheap here compared to north of the border. Second, the variation in prices from one location to another isn’t nearly as wide as it is for housing.
Given that Puerto Vallarta is heavily tourist-oriented, it’s not surprising that food costs are more elevated there. While some of this premium is no doubt opportunistic (PV residents and visitors are generally known to be well-healed), higher costs also likely reflect the logistical challenge of serving less dense coastal areas with inferior infrastructure. If you’ve ever tried to drive from one end of PV to the other on a typical weekday afternoon, you know what I’m talking about.
Of course, what you pay also has a lot to do with where you shop. As all savvy expats know, the best deals on fresh food and staple items can be found where ordinary Mexicans shop — at local tianguis (outdoor markets) not supermarkets. If this seems counter-intuitive, be sure to check out my previous post on the wonderful world of Mexican tianguis and how to shop them.
Now if your appetite leans more heavily towards imported products instead of local food, you’re grocery bills will be significantly inflated. So opting to eat like a local (or a vegetarian consuming mostly local foods) is a wise move that is likely to make you healthier, wealthier, and possibly thinner too!
Utilities
In this section, I’ve opted to compare non-energy utilities like mobile phone plans and internet service as they’re near-universal needs (unless you’re Christopher Walken) and lend themselves to apples-to-apples comparisons more than energy utilities, which I’ll touch on briefly later.
The prices below represent costs for plans that someone working online, streaming videos, downloading large files, and regularly taking video calls might choose. A retiree whose technology needs are limited to scrolling social media and reading the news could get away with a lot less.
No matter how you slice it, tech-focused utilities are vastly cheaper in Mexico than north of the border. And once again, Guadalajara is best in class — with CDMX surprisingly finishing last.
The vast differences in what expats report spending on energy utilities always amaze me. I chalk it up to the number of variables involved, e.g. home size, household size, climate variation, individual preferences, resource scarcity (yes it’s a thing in Mexico), use of renewables, and so on.
In general, electricity is expensive in Mexico, whereas water is cheap (at least for now). Propane gas, which we use for cooking and heating our water, is also very affordable.
To illustrate, my household (two adults and assorted animals living in a 3-bedroom home) spends an average of $1,323 MXN per month for water, electricity, and propane gas (about $65 USD). We have A/C units in two rooms of the house, but only use it in April and May, the two hottest months of the year. The rest of the year we use neither heat nor A/C. Oh, the joys of living in a near-perfect climate!
For those seeking a smaller energy footprint, I suggest focusing on Mexico’s Central Highlands, i.e. where Guadalajara, San Miguel de Allende, and Mexico City are located. Higher altitudes bring cooler and drier temperatures, which eliminates the need for A/C in all but a couple of months of the year — or in the case of CDMX — always.
Coastal, beachy Mexican towns that draw hordes of expats are diabolically hot much of the year, making costly A/C a necessity. (this problem will only get worse as the climate becomes more extreme)
Transportation
Massive variability in the reported cost of taxi services from expats living in these four cities left me questioning the value of the data. Instead, I’ve provided a cost comparison of public transit rides, which can’t easily be gamed or gringo priced.
Unlike all the previous comparisons, when it comes to mass transit Jalisco’s two cities (Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta) are much more costly than Mexico City or San Miguel de Allende.
Fortunately, this line item won’t break anyone’s budget in Mexico since the cost tops out at roughly 50 cents a ride in Puerto Vallarta at today’s exchange rates. Moreover, frequent users can spend even less by purchasing a monthly pass instead of individual tickets.
And if you prefer to “splurge” on Ubers, they are typically available in major cities in Mexico for around $3-4 USD a ride when traveling a couple of miles or less. (though prices do increase at peak times)
All in, Cost of Living Comparison Between Cities
So… to bundle it all up, the table below tallies the estimated cost of living in each city currently — with peso costs in the three left columns and the USD equivalent to their right.
For full transparency, Numbeo’s cost of living estimates (far left column) exclude spending on vacations and travel, children, pets, private cars, or taking Ubers/taxis. So these figures look conservative to me — as most expats have at least some of these additional costs.
Conclusion
The cost of living across these four Mexican cities is quite similar when housing is excluded. The surprising thing to many newcomers is that housing can consume up to two-thirds of a monthly budget in Mexico when renting (!) so your choice of destination has a big impact on your overall budget due to huge variability in rental prices.
That said, if living outside the city center is desirable for you — or you need less than 3 bedrooms — your shelter costs in each of these locations can be considerably lower.
And while the cost of living should not be the driving factor in selecting a new place to call home — I’d rank climate, vibe, pace of life, and compatibility with your hobbies just as highly — the big takeaway from this exercise is that your money stretches quite a bit further in Guadalajara than in San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta, or Mexico City.