Cost of Living Comparison — Canadian Cities Calculator

This cost of living comparison puts two Canadian cities side by side across the four expenses that dominate a monthly budget: one-bedroom rent, food, public transit and utilities. Pick any pair from Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Halifax, set your household size, and you get an itemized monthly total for each city plus a plain-English verdict — which city is cheaper, by how much per month, and what that adds up to per year.

The math adapts to your household: food and transit scale with the number of people, while rent (a one-bedroom figure) and utilities stay per household. As a worked example, a single person in Toronto totals about $2,986 a month ($2,200 rent, $450 food, $156 transit, $180 utilities) versus roughly $2,212 in Calgary — so Calgary comes out around $774 a month cheaper, close to $9,300 a year.

A salary-equivalence mode answers the question behind most comparisons: what income would maintain my lifestyle after moving? Enter a salary in City A and it scales the figure by the ratio of the two cities' total monthly costs — $75,000 in Toronto works out to roughly $55,600 in Calgary by this method. All figures are indicative 2025 estimates of typical costs, everything computes instantly in your browser, and nothing is uploaded or stored.